Empires' End
by starpuppycz
Summary: What if Sisko had let his principles get the better of him, on that fateful day when he sought to bring the Romulans into the war against the Dominion? What if the Federation fell? The Dominion now struggles to maintain control of its new territory while our scattered heroes rebel. Romulus is the last free power in the quadrant. And meanwhile Data may hold the key to the future.
1. Chapter 1: Scattered, But Not Without Ho

Empires' End

Chapter One: Scattered, But Not Without Hope

Councilor Troy stepped out of the stone stairway into the dim candlelit room. A vulcan sitting in a desk looked up from his pad as she approached. "Earth's been destroyed," she said.

The light went out in his eyes. He starred gloomily into his own thoughts for a small eternity. Then something hardened, "How many dead?"

"The whole nine billion. The Dominion evacuated their troops and then bombarded the planet with triphasic torpedoes. No one survived." Troy paused. She feared this next part might deter her already demoralized captain. "Their broadcasts say it was punishment for former Admiral Ross' rebellion. They say it was to set an example."

The Vulcan shook his head, "Ross contacted me two months ago. His movement was barely off the ground. To retaliate like this, so soon. No… the Dominion planned to do this from the beginning. They must have realized, if a centralized rebellion were to form, it would have to start-"

"-at the capitol of the Federation."

The death of worlds hung over the room, but they did not have the time to contemplate it. "How goes the hunt?"

"Riker has found a captain willing to go along with our plan," said Troy. "He has a science vessel that's authorized to leave Vulcan. His engineer should be able to beam us aboard undetected, and once we're past the orbital blockade and far enough into interstellar space, we'll cut the power and hopefully overwhelm its Jem'Hadar monitoring force."

"And once we've freed the ship, how do we plan to sneak into Romulus?" If they could get to Romulus, he hoped to eventually find Spock, whose underground Reunification movement may be their greatest hope, now that Romulus was the last free power in the Alpha Quadrant.

Troy smiled, "Geordi has some ideas."

"Excellent." The vulcan stood up and tucked at his shirt. He was tired of hiding behind walls and false identities while people died across the quadrant. He was tired of this damn monastery. "It will be good to have a ship under us again. Make it so." Picard thought back to the last time he had held the Enterprise, and the last time he had seen Data.

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"Captain, I am afraid our new mission has no plausible chance of success," said Data.

Picard sighed, "Yes I'm aware of that Mr. Data. But all remaining ships have been ordered to rendezvous with Admiral Nechayev's fleet to make our last stand. This is our duty as Starfleet officers to see this war through to the end." The Enterprise was currently orbiting Vulcan, alone. Its presence alone deterred any minor Jem'Hadar incursion, freeing up forces to hold the line at DS9- the line which had just fallen 4 hours ago, marking the end of the Federation.

"I do not think that is wise sir."

"Data I never thought you to be a coward. What is this about?"

"It is not cowardice Captain, it is ethics. I am willing to sacrifice lives for the Federation. But I dislike the prospect of doing so for a-" his eyes momentarily looked away to find the right word, then they darted back- "a gesture."

"We all have our duties, commander."

Data nodded. "Yes, Jean-Luc." He turned his chair back to the consol and began rapidly dancing his fingers across the display. A shiver of blue surrounded Picard.

"Data!" he shouted, but he was on the streets of Vulcan before he could react, surrounded by the rest of his bewildered crew. He learned later that Data had in fact piloted the Enterprise into battle, as they had been ordered. Operated by a single android, the ship still lasted as long as any other in their final firefight. Having saved his crewmates and defended the line, he had done both his duty to his uniform and to his friends, to the very end.

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Odo was sick. Dr. Mora couldn't diagnose him, let alone cure him, but he calculated that at his current rate of deterioration Odo would be dead within 3 weeks. His only hope was to find Dr. Bashir, who had disappeared shortly after the fall of DS9.

"We'll track him down, I promise," said Kira. They were in a large cave, surrounded by resistance fighters.

"No, Nerys. Your job is here. I can't," He coughed, then put his hand up to his forehead, pushing a piece of peeling skin back into place. "I can't be responsible for you… for you abandoning your cause, Major, just because of my weakness. I'll do this… on my own."

Kira held his hands in hers. "Odo."

"I'll go with him," spoke up Garak.

Odo guffawed. "You?"

He smiled, "You'll find I'm very good at finding people." Garak then looked around the room worriedly, "Besides I don't think the people here like me very much."

Kira curtly nodded. "Okay you look after Odo. I'm gonna go punch some Cardassians in the nose."

Odo tried to smile, "give them another sock in the jaw for me too."

"Well since we're all in agreement," said Garak, "I suggest we waste as little time as possible. Major I take it you have some form of off-world transportation lined up?" She nodded. "Good, I already have some ideas where to start looking."

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Sloan paced back in forth while Bashir studied his files. "I still think this is a waste of time doctor. Just because we've already lost doesn't mean you can just finish every minor project that once popped into your head."

"You're the one who said we needed more operatives, Sloan."

"She's basically a catatonic."

"Which is why," said Julian, annoyed, "I'm _fixing_ her."

"Yes but she's _always_ been catatonic. What could she possibly know that could be helpful?"

"She figured out the Dominion's plan to acquire the components for their _white._ Imagine what she could do once her senses speed up enough so the world actually looks interesting to her."

"Yes, I remember hearing about that little episode. And then your special club recommended total surrender to the Dominion."

"We were right, after all. Defeat was inevitable."

"Yes but you didn't guess they would destroy Earth did you? You planned for Earth to be the seed of our eventual revolution. But the Dominion had the same idea. Must we recruit from the folks who made such a big mistake?"

Bashir winced at the destruction of his homeworld. Sloan could be extremely cruel, but unfortunately he had been right all along. They did need someone like him. He finished his work and turned around. "Well the procedure's ready, at any rate. I'll go set up our equipment, you go get Sarina." He thought for a moment, "and tell the others they can follow her up to the door. They'll cause a scene if you don't let them come that far, but they'll wreck havoc if they're actually in surgery with her."

Sloan shrugged and left for the other room where they were storing the Mutants. Tracking them down hadn't been difficult, they were just lucky to have not been on Earth during the-

The massacre.

Julian tried not to think about that and walked into his surgical room. He tried not to think about his father's last message, saying he was going to make it big with his new gig designing exotic fisheries back on Earth. He tried not to imagine their fiery screams.

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"You said you had something, interesting for me," said Weyoun.

The vorta scientist nodded. "We've been working on it for months now, but we've finally got it to… talk."

Weyoun followed the other vorta up to the observation window and looked at the thing hanging partially disassembled from a mess of cables. "Very interesting."

"The Federation's prototype robot. Years ahead of anything else they had, and, pardon me for saying, ahead of anything we have too. It was found in the wreckage of their flagship. From the lack of bodies inside the wreckage, we suspect it ran the entire ship itself."

"Hence your interest. Yes that could be very… useful." Weyoun had brief visions of a Dominion without the violent and often insolent Jem'Hadar. A fleet run by robots would certainly be more secure than one run by soldiers whose loyalty must be bought with drugs, and even then had managed to betray and kill his predecessor, Weyoun 4.

"Unfortunately, we've still barely scratched the surface of its design. It will be some time before we can replicate it. For now we've been more focused on extracting intelligence from the machine. Maybe it knows the location of its creator. The robot's been like a statue though since we captured it. At first I thought it was damaged, but in reality it's just very patient. We've been slowly worming into its cognitive matrix, and I can get it to answer questions now. Though its responses are… limited. It's still fighting."

"Can it hear me?"

The scientist tapped a consol. "It can now."

Weyoun looked soulfully up at the future of the Dominion. "Do… do you have a name?"

The robot twitched, "Data."

"Hmm…" pondered Weyoun, "what is it trying to say?" Data not found seemed a likely possibility.

"We're not sure. We've asked it that before, and that's all it says. It never finishes the sentence."

Weyoun tried another tract. "Are there any others like you?"

The robot spasmed again, then said, "Yes." That was interesting.

"Do you know where they are?"

"No." Frustrating.

"Do you know who they are?"

"Yes."

"Who are they?"

"There is, Lore." Lore, it was a starting point. "And there was, Lal." Weyoun caught something in the robot's voice.

"What happened to Lal?"

"She was… flawed. She did not last."

"Who was-" fine he'd humor the machine with a gendered pronoun- "she?"

"My… daughter." Very interesting.

"As in, you made her? You can self-replicate?" If so, they may not have to reverse engineer it.

"I can… not. The experiment failed."

This was starting to look like a very promising _dead end_. Weyoun tried yet another tract. "Who made you?"

"Dr. Soong."

"And where is he?"

"Gone."

Weyoun sighed, "As in dead?"

"Yes."

"Does… does anyone else know how to construct you?"

"No."

Weyoun turned to the scientist. "This looks like a very long-term project. I'll give you some additional resources, and you'll keep me updated on your progress." He turned and walked back up the hall. Unfortunately, they may not have a long-term. The wormhole was still killing anything that went through it, and the only Founder left in the Alpha Quadrant seemed to be dying, though she tried to hide it. Without a Founder, how could there be a Dominion? And how would he go on without a God?

Perhaps Odo… but no, Weyoun had stopped thinking of Odo as a Founder years ago, as had Odo. He sided with Bajor over his own people, had killed another and been cast out, for a while at least. The Founder had tried to bring him back into the fold back on that Bajoran station, but he ultimately hadn't returned. And even the Founder seemed disinterested now. Still… a God was a God.

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"Disengage cloak and fire," commanded Sisko from his seat on the Defiant.

"Ay ay, Javert," said the young rebel manning the tactical station. Javert had been the nickname Sisko assumed after he'd resurrected what was left of the Maquis into a fighting force; it seemed fitting. After all, Eddington was right, all those years ago. He was dogmatic, and it had cost the universe dearly. If he had just gotten the Romulans into the war, if hadn't stuck to his principles at the last minute, maybe there'd still be a Federation. But he couldn't lie, he couldn't cheat, not a loyal officer of Starfleet. Well, he wasn't in Starfleet anymore. There was no more Starfleet, thanks to him. And he would never make that mistake again. No more principles, no more rules. There was just his home, and the enemy he fought to get them _out_ of his home. Just like Eddington. Just like the Maquis.

Javert was all alone now. Jadzia Dax had gone with her husband Worf to help organize the Klingon resistance. Kira and Odo started a terrorist cell on Bajor, like old times, though they at least still stayed in contact on occasion. Bashir had disappeared off the face of the world. And O'Brien was laying low somewhere with Keiko and their two children; war was one thing, but he couldn't join a suicide mission with a baby to look after. But he still had his ship. When the station was finally overrun, this ship- with its cloak and extensive weaponry- had been what saved his crew. And now it was his greatest weapon in his private little war.

This time the target was a shipyard in the former neutral zone. Normally they were untouchable without a whole fleet backing you, but this one was still under construction. And the Dominion forces, still depleted from the war, were busy defending their boarder with the Romulans, blockading planets to prevent civilian ships from becoming part of the resistance effort, and defending the cloning facilities that were now turning out millions of occupation troops. It could be argued that this was a pointless gesture, since Dominion ships no longer needed to be in such high supply now that there was no war to fight. But Sisko still held out hope that, now that the war was decided, Romulus might strike before the Dominion had consolidated their new territory, to prevent becoming surrounded on all sides by a powerful and unified enemy. And Sisko wanted to make that potential strike as easy for the Romulans as possible.

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Senator Cretak entered the office of Senator Vreenak.

Vreenak took a sip of Kali-fal before dining to acknowledge her presence. "I thought you would come."

"It's time to consider Romulus' place in history, Senator."

"I'm never not, Cretak. But tell me Senator, what place in history do you have in mind?"

She took a seat at his desk. "A footnote in the Dominion's long empire, or the leaders of the Alpha Quadrant."

Vreenak smiled. "I thought it was something like that. I take it your advocating a preemptive strike against our allies?"

"Now would be the best time, while their forces are still busy controlling their new territory. A better time perhaps would have been when those territories still had forces of their own to ally with, but I lost the argument on that decision."

"By quite a large margin, if I remember."

"But it can still be to our advantage. If we could succeed, there will be no power left in the quadrant that isn't crippled beyond recognition. I'm hoping against hope that this was your plan all along, rather than simply a naive trust in the Dominion's word."

"Well I wouldn't want to disappoint you, Senator," he said with even more affable smugness. "No, I wasn't planning on taking them at their word. However, nor was I planning on a costly engagement that would pointlessly end the lives of millions of loyal citizens."

"Don't tell me all this has been to postpone war in the hope it never comes. Because I assure you, it will come."

"You sound just like that Federation captain I met a year back."

"The Federation are peace-obsessed meeklings lead by an undisciplined population of abject cowards. And even they could not avoid war with the Dominion."

"You forget they started it, with that minefield of theirs."

"Because the Dominion was building up forces with ships from the Gamma Quadrant. Even they could spot a trap Vreenak. If they could, surely a Romulan must do better."

"Yet you think I'd fall for such a simple trap as pride?"

Cretak looked down in embarrassment, but then smiled, "It did seem to be your greatest weakness."

"_Calculated_ pride, Senator. There's a difference," he sighed. "But unfortunately you're right; the Dominion's peace offer was a trap. They are conquerors, and there can be no coexistence with conquerors, unless you match them in strength."

"But you've allowed them to become stronger by threefold before taking action."

"We are Romulans, Senator. Surely you know territory does not equal strength. Technology equals strength. Our ancestors built this empire from scratch just because they had warp drives before some others. We kept our empire because of our development of the self-defending mine. We spread across the quadrant because of the cloak- and were later diminished when we lost the monopoly on that technology by sharing it with the Klingons."

Cretak winced at the reminder of their history's greatest folly. "So then what is your plan? Did you spend the resources we would've used in the war effort on a last ditch research project? Because I don't remember such a desperate bill passing before the Senate."

"Sarcasm really doesn't suit you Senator. But no, what I saved by delaying the war wasn't resources, it was lives. Lives that hopefully-" he picked up a pad, brought up a file, and handed it to her- "won't have to be paid in the future."

On the pad was a diagram of a humanoid shaped machine. Realization donned on her as she skimmed over its specifications.

"Its name is B4, we acquired it 4 years ago and it's been my pet project ever since. Kept in total secrecy, of course."

"Of course," said Cretak. She knew very well the importance of controlling information. And this data could reshape the entire Alpha Quadrant. She looked up, "but the Federation has had one of these for over a decade and still hasn't successfully replicated the technology."

"Yes well, like I said: technology is _our_ might. We've already constructed a prototype of its positronic brain. And secretly refitted a warbird to run without a crew. We've evenly perfected a set of repair drones that will act as engineers, all controlled by that magnificent mechanical brain," Vreenak caught himself overstating things. "Even if it's a bit of an idiot savant." He took another sip of Kali-fal, "But within another few months, I'll take command of our shipyards- with the Senate's approval of course- and begin mass production. You'd be amazed how much of the ships we can leave out when you don't need life-support or crew quarters. We'll also retrofit most of the current fleet, to save lives and increase combat performance- you should see how this thing performs in simulations, it's miraculous- and then you can have your war, Senator. A completely costless war."

Cretak's head was still spinning. She looked back down on the pad, "This might, just work."

Vreenak smiled smugly again, "Glad I didn't disappoint after all. So then, I can count on your support when I unveil the future of Romulus."


	2. Chapter 2: Into the Breach

Empires' End

Chapter Two: Into the Breach

"Our cloak is offline sir," yelled the young Maquis at tactical as a consol burst into sparks behind her.

"Damn," said Sisko. They had managed to destroy the shipyard, but had taken heavy damage in the process. And two pursuit ships were almost in firing range.

"Five more ships on sensors," said the crewman at ops. They really needed that cloak.

"Helmsman, set course for the Badlands. We'll just have to hope we can reach before they catch us." The Badlands should get the Dominion off their tail long enough to repair the cloaking device.

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Damar watched the ship change course on his monocular display. "He's heading into the Badlands. Predictable."

"But effective," said the vorta woman standing next to him. Kilana he remembered. "It will be difficult to track him in there."

"Difficult, but not impossible. His ship gives off a lot of power when not masked by its cloak. Even surrounded by anomalies, our sensors should still be able to get an idea of his location, at least if we have enough ships to triangulate the signature."

"Hmm… these ships need to return to blockading Bajor as soon as possible, but destroying the last Federation warship is a high enough priority."

Damar grunted, "I'm glad we're in agreement. Now order our ships into a wide pursuit pattern." Officially she was here only to assist him, only Weyoun could pull his leash. But the vorta were used to commanding subjects of the Dominion, not partnering with them. He knew being the leader of Cardassia counted for nothing with her.

Kilana turned to the First, "Send the other ships into the plasma storm, but keep us at a safe distance."

Damar frowned, "I said all our ships vorta. We go in too."

Kilana laughed with false charm, "Why would we do that? I would get into trouble if I got the head of Cardassia killed during peace time. Let the soldiers handle this themselves."

"I am a soldier. And it's been too long since I was inside a fight." And he wanted to take down the killer of Dukat himself. But the vorta wouldn't understand vengeance.

Kilana shrugged. "We can always get another figurehead."

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"Bridge to Engineering, do you have an estimate on that cloak?" said Sisko.

A voice replied over the comm., "Maybe four more hours? I've fixed the resonance coils, but now we're having to adapt components from our aft phaser emitters to replace a fused plasma coupler. Hope you won't need to shoot behind you for a while sir."

"I guess we'll manage." They weren't going to shoot their why out of this one anyway. "Ops, can you get anything on the pursuit ships?"

"Sorry sir, can't penetrate this interference."

"We'll just have to hope that's a good sign." Dominion sensors did seem to have a few advantages over Federation technology, and his ship ran a lot hotter than it should, so just because he couldn't see them, didn't necessarily mean they couldn't see him. His best bet was to find as much interference as possible. "What's giving off the most static right now?"

"A pulsar wrapped in a nebula is emitting a lot of gamma radiation and igniting one hell of a plasma storm."

Maybe that would be too obvious. "And the second most?"

"A rogue gas giant with an abnormally intense magnetic field that's fluctuating wildly," said the crewman.

Intriguing, in a better time he would have approached it just to learn its secrets. Now it was just a place to hide.

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"I have them sir," said one of the Jem'Hadar.

"Then all ships close in," said the First, tightening the net. "Surrounded, outnumbered, and damaged. This will be an easy victory. Victory is life."

"Yes," said Kilana automatically.

Damar smiled sourly. "This is a good day."

"Tell that to the shipyards," snapped Kilana.

"Yes, that was unfortunate. But in a few moments Sisko will be dead. And we'll never lose a shipyard again."

"Sir, we've lost the ship," said the soldier handling the sensors.

"What was their last location?" demanded the First.

"Sector 357, grid Alpha," replied the Jem'Hadar.

The First's eyes momentarily went blank as he brought up some maps on his monocular display. He turned to the vorta, "the enemy must have flown closer to one of the radiating bodies. The primary candidates are a pulsar and an irregular gas giant."

"Send 4 ships into the pulsar's system, and have the remaining two ships rendezvous with us at the giant," said Damar.

Kilana turned to him, "I take it you suspect he went for the Gas Giant?" She knew he wanted to do this himself. But just as a soldier seeking a fix like he'd intimated, or did she understand his true motives? Did it even mater? What would a vorta care about his interests?

Damar shrugged, "It gives him more options. If we find him, he can try flying into the planet. You can't do that with a pulsar and live."

In a few moments they approached the rogue giant. Its erratic magnetic field played havoc with their sensors, but at this range they could get a lock on the Defiant's location, and Damar even got a static-filled visual of the ship on his monocular display. It had some scarring along its rear and port side, but did not look exactly crippled.

Once the Defiant spotted them, it plunged for the planet as predicted. The First ordered their two ships to pursue it, leaving them up here to pick it off once they smoked Sisko out.

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Picard crouched in a service hatch holding a phaser, with Dr. Crusher behind him. There were seven Jem'Hadar on this ship. The vulcan officers were all unarmed, so that left Picard, Crusher, Riker, Geordi, and Diana with their smuggled weapons, so they were slightly outnumbered. And the Jem'Hadar were extremely effective soldiers, so Picard was grateful they would also have the element of surprise. It was nearly time. Picard opened the hatch, and they quietly crawled out into the hallway. Around the corner would be the transporter room, where two Jem'Hadar stood guard. Their man in engineering unfortunately could not deactivate the alarm system, so they couldn't gang up on the guards two or three at a time with all five officers. Any phaser fire would alert the rest of the ship. Instead it would be a coordinated effort killing as many as possible, while the engineer cut the power so the remaining Jem'Hadar wouldn't be able to alert the Dominion of this ship's mutiny. He nodded to Beverly, and they crept forward.

Leaning against the wall before the sharp turn, they counted down. With expert timing, Picard and Dr. Crusher swung around the corner, aimed down the 10 meter long hallway at the two guards standing by the transporter room doors, and fired just as the lights went out. The failing lights served as enough of a distraction to let them get in the first shots. It also hurt their aim, but their Starfleet training won out, and the battle was done before the Jem'Hadar had fired a shot. With Geordi, Riker and Diana hopefully taking out the other three in engineering, that just left the two on the bridge. Picard and Dr. Crusher headed up there.

Without a working turbolift, they had to climb through another Jefferies tube. When they were near the bridge, they waited for the others so they would have the advantage. Once they arrived, Picard nodded to Riker and they opened the hatch into a turbolift shaft. Directly above them was a turbolift, patiently waiting on deck one as default (they were lucky no one had been using it when they cut the power). Through an access panel each of them, with a little stilted acrobatics, entered the lift. They were now one permanently shut door away from the bridge, and two Jem'Hadar soldiers.

Picard looked to Riker, and he and Diana set their phasers to maximum and vaporized the door, with the others holding up their phasers ready to find and shoot the soldiers inside. But when the red glow of the vanished door faded, there was only a single vulcan man inside. He walked up to them.

"Captain Picard," he said. "The soldiers are in the captain's office," he nodded towards a door to the side of the bridge that had been forced partway open and then barricaded with a desk. "They are holding my captain and two officers hostage, and told me to tell you their demands."

"Which are?"

"Does it matter? You won't meet them. The logical path is clear: we fight them, and hope they don't manage to kill the hostages before we've killed them. To attempt anything else would most likely result in our deaths, and would certainly result in the failure of your mission, which I assume is of vital importance to freeing the Federation."

Picard nodded grimly, and they slowly, from multiple angles, approached the barricaded door. The vulcan, unarmed, walked into the turbolift to best avoid getting caught in the impending firefight. Once they were backed against the wall on either side of the wall, Picard had Geordi vaporize the desk and door, and they stormed in, phasers firing. The two Jem'Hadar each raised their weapons with one hand, and snapped the neck of a hostage with the other.

They were gunned down before any of Picard's crew was hit, but that still left the captain and an officer dead. The last hostage was on the ground, injured in the crossfire. Dr. Crusher knelt down and scanned him while Riker left to ask the vulcan officer returning from the turbolift where the medkits were. Beverly closed her tricorder, "she has multiple fractures and a burnt lung, but I should be able to save her."

"Good," said Picard. The entered the room with a medkit and handed it to Crusher. "I'm sorry," Picard said to him. It was his crew's plan that got these people killed, his responsibility.

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Water dripped onto Garak's hand from some undisclosed pipe in the darkness. At least he hoped it was water; it didn't cause any burning, so that was a good sign. He opened up his bag, and a brown liquid poured itself out and slowly layered itself onto the large bed-like shelf. It slowly, painfully took the shape of a disheveled Odo. Garak leaned over to him, "Do you need anything?"

"There's nothing you can give me Garak. Humph, there's nothing Bashir can do for me either. This is all just a wild goose chase."

"Optimistic as always Constable, but I wouldn't rule out our good doctor until we've tried."

"There's a battle on Garak. I should be using the last of my strength to help Kira, not wasting it on this self-indulgent delusion that there might be a cure… But you know that already. And I doubt that you'd waste your time here simply out of the goodness in your heart, when you could be out… assassinating someone. So, tell me Garak, what are you getting out of this?"

"Well if it will put your mind at ease, I have a very devious, very reassuringly selfish reason for finding Bashir. I suspect the men who took him are people I want business with."

"Ah, you think it's Section 31."

"They do seem to have a recurring interest in him. Out of the three times he's been abducted in the past, twice it was by the Federation's best kept secret." He barely talked about the second time, but Garak was quite sure they had used him as an operative in some degree, something to do with that unfortunate business with the Breen.

"And you're hoping to what, join with them? I know you've been unemployed since the destruction of DS9 took your shop, but that seems rather desperate. What makes you think they'd take you in?"

"I'll be bringing them a gift."

"Hmm. Me. Well I suppose I might at least make for an interesting decayed sample by the time you find them. What makes you so sure they're still around anyway?"

"To my knowledge the Dominion doesn't even know of their existence. And I'm counting on the organization to be clever enough to avoid being stepped on accidently. In any event it gives us someplace to start."

"Does it? I have no leads on Section 31, no contacts to speak of. And believe me it's not for lack of trying. A rogue element of the Federation secretly performing acts of espionage with vast technological resources and possibly the support of Starfleet. I was very interested to learn about them. But all I got were ghosts, Garak. And my impression was you did no better."

"Not quite. I did once manage to, after several discreet inquiries with my former friends from the days of the Obsidian Order, catch a rumor that matched a certain pattern I was looking for: an inexplicable event that happened to benefit the Federation, but lacked the somewhat merciful signature of Star Fleet Intelligence. Apparently independent dilithium miners across the quadrant had begun having problems that disrupted their quotas. Which posed a more than minor inconvenience for the Dominion, which at the time was fueling two empires' worth of ships with one empire's worth of territory, and was ferociously importing dilithium from outside. According to the rumor these problems all seemed to come from the Orion Syndicate, though nothing could be proven."

"And you think it was really Section 31?"

"No Constable, I think my contacts were right about the Syndicates involvement. I'm just wondering who put them up to it."

"Ah, I see. Pretty lousy evidence if you ask me, especially considering the Syndicate got in bed with the Dominion."

"Yes it can't be a strong tie, if it's there at all. Still, digging into such a comprehensive criminal organization may dig us some clues anyway."

"So I take it we're going to Farius Prime. It's close, probably has less Dominion security since it was an independent world, and we know some contacts there because of O'Brien."

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Farius Prime was muggy world. Drab establishments tucked themselves in corners between the hulking corpses of obsolete industries, the sky still stained by their old pollution. The Faradins had sacrificed their world for just enough industrial power to maintain its independence, when the universe first came to their door, but no one made things here anymore. The planet's entire purpose was to harbor the lost souls and criminals of other worlds, a refuge from the laws of others. Farius' only asset was its independence- and the Dominion had just taken that away.

Garak and Odo walked into the bar that O'Brien had frequented as Connely, when he had wormed into the Orion Syndicate's lower ranks. The men he had worked with were now dead, betrayed by their colleague, but perhaps someone here still new something, or someone, they could use.

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Senator Cretak watched the engineers put the finishing touches on their creation: a meter long brass egg covered in blinking lights they'd hooked into a large receptacle built into the floor to receive it. This egg was the prototype brain they'd designed from partially dissecting and probing Vreenak's pet android. It was larger than the original, they still hadn't reverse engineered all the necessary technology, but it was functional and had passed its combat tests in simulation with flying colors. Now it was time for a real test. The lead engineer nodded that they were done, and Cretak signaled for transport off the ship. She had wanted to see it's installation before the demonstration, now that she was part of this project.

A flash of green and she was on the bridge of the warbird Numitor, with Vreenak standing off to the side of its captain, watching his prototype ship on the viewscreen. It looked just like any other warbird, and aside from some key modifications it was. The designs for the roomless ships, that would take full advantage of its lack of crew, were almost complete but wouldn't be prototyped until they got the approval of the Senate. Actually most of the Senate still didn't know about this project. Records of this demonstration, if successful, would be shown to them along with Vreenak's proposal, but for now this show was just for the two Senators.

Two warbirds, both equally armed, prepared for combat. The weapons were blanks of course, but the ships were rigged to create real damage to inflicted systems, to test the positronic brain's ability to coordinate repair drones, as well as fly the ship and control its systems. The captain frowned, I still don't like these wargames. Usually we just shut down damaged systems for set amounts of time, instead of breaking perfectly fine warships. You do realize mid combat repair work is just a band aid to get through the fight? After an intensive battle it takes weeks or even months of work in spacedock to get them shipshape again. It just seems like a waist to put two ships out of commission for that long when the Dominion is breathing down our necks."

Vreenak smiled, "Not to discredit your ship, it's crew, or your abilities captain, but if the Dominion invades you're one warbird won't be what keeps them at bay. But this experiment just might. And we need to convince the Senate with as realistic a battle as possible. You wouldn't want to use half measures, would you?" Besides at least the hulls wouldn't be damaged. That was often took the most resources to replace and couldn't be fixed mid battle anyway.

"And we need to convince ourselves," added Cretak. She wasn't going to support placing the Romulus' defense in these robots' hands without proof of their effectiveness.

The positronic warbird set on a strafing run at their ship, opening a volley of glowing orbs and low-intensity lasers once it had a firing solution. The captain ordered evasive maneuvers, and began the complicated task of leaving the enemy ship's main firing arc while putting it in theirs. But the positronic ship weaved and dodged better than the romulans could keep up with, and the helmsman could not escape its fire, nor provide the tactical officer with opportunities for effective shots. Another false torpedo to the failing aft shields and the ship shook from preset demolition charges.

"Engineering to bridge, we have a coolant leak! Impulse is down until we can repair it." The captain banged his consol in frustration. With only thrusters, this positronic ship would fly circles around them, more so.

"Estimated time to repair?" he demanded.

"15 minutes if I can bypass this plasma junction."

"You have 10," the captain turned to his helmsman, "Jump to warp 4. The enemy will pursue us, but at warp we won't be at a disadvantage from the lack of impulse." And the ships wouldn't be able to use as many fancy maneuvers, but the captain probably didn't want to admit yet that the computer was out flying his men.

As the prototype pursued them, they exchanged more and more fire. The positronic ship suffered serious damage to its forward phasers, a devastating blow, but they suffered damage to their warp drive and had to come down to sublight. By now their impulse drive was almost repaired, but the positronic ship still had a few minutes of advantage which it used to get its starboard phasers some good firing solutions while slipping out of their weapons locks. By the time they could go to impulse again and take advantage of the ships lack of forward phasers, they had already suffered new damages to their aft phasers, which prevented them from firing at the ship while keeping it behind them to actually take that advantage.

After thirty more minute of this, eventually their ship was dead in the water, completely at the mercy of the positronic ship, which still had thrusters, warp, and port phasers. A smug Vreenak ordered the prototype to stand down. For just a moment, Cretak caught a big grin on his face, beaming at his victorious baby. But then he cooled his pride into more of a controlled low broil, and turned to the captain. "Well, I think that was a successful demonstration. I appreciate that you didn't pull your punches, captain. Your tactics did you credit. But ultimately the machine proved the better soldier. I think this should prove my point effectively to the Senate."

Cretak spoke up, "And if it could beat you, a pride of the Romulan fleet, just imagine what it will make of the Dominion's army of drugged beasts."


	3. Chapter 3: Clandestine Heroes

new text

Empires' End

Chapter 3: Clandestine Heroes

Dr. Bashir leaned against the balcony, overlooking the streets of Cardassia Prime. The dawn blazed orange across the sky, clutched in stylized claws built on the curved towers of poised stone; suspended walkways marched from building to building in a web of artful purpose; and an oval viewscreen embedded in a nearby wall held the pale visage of Weyoun, a reminder that this proud city was under occupation. And as Cardassians were so fond of remarking of Bajor, there had been no war here. Unlike the Federation, Cardassia had simply surrendered.

Bashir wore Cardassian black military armor, and a Cardassian face, courtesy of his own self-administered surgery. He was playing the part of Gul Usted, a man whom Sloan had recently executed. Bashir had memorized his profile, and studied his mannerisms during the man's final moments under Sloan's care, from which he decently extrapolated his behavior under… less extreme stimulus. For days he had stayed with them in that brightly lit room, watching, absorbing. And now it was _his turn_ to be the changeling infiltrator.

This was the first step in a very long, very complicated plan, worked out in detail by the Mutants, himself, and the single remnant of Section 31. Sloan himself, after Bashir had been successfully planted, had taken his oh-so-covert ship (full of illegal cloaks, clandestine transporters, and a number of bioweapons Bashir tried not to think about) to help plant Sarina at a Dominion supply station on the other side of the former Cardassian Empire.

"Gul Usted."

Bashir began to startle absentmindedly, but that is what Bashir-the-inexperienced-brash-doctor would do, not Gul Usted. The Gul turned slowly to his greeter, making him wait an imperceptibly longer time to speak with him, as a subtle show of dominance.

"Yes, Glinn?" Bashir had formed a tight model of the Gul in his mind, and followed it, except where necessary. A superior theory of mind was a gift of his genetically enhanced background. Bashir wondered: the human brain was certainly capable of supporting multiple conscious entities running on their wetware, as had been proven by countless alien body-snatchers; and his mental model was far more complex and far more accurate than even that held by the greatest of actors, or the closest of lovers. So, in a manner of speaking, could their really be a difference between the man he shaped in his head, and the man he had helped kill? Perhaps Usted wasn't really dead, so long as a posthuman remembered him.

"Legate Porania wishes to speak with you now," said the Glinn.

"Yes," said Gul Usted, "I bet he does." Bashir followed the Glinn into Legate Porania's office. Porania sat behind his desk and invited Bashir to sit across him.

"Come in come in. You know I've heard a lot about you, particularly that business with Arkanis. Three warbirds at once, very impressive. Anyway I have a new assignment for you, part of a little project the Vorta have been cooking up."

"Assignment, sir?" Gul Usted was naturally furious to lose command of his ship last week, but of course would never tell a superior this. He only hoped Porania had a good reason for pulling him out.

"Yes. You'll be in charge of their new cloning facility. With the wormhole still full of hostile aliens, the Vorta can't bring in new administrators for all our acquired territory, so they've had to sure up their numbers by having multiple copies active at once. This is of course an intolerable situation for anyone. And I've been told they find this idea as repugnant as you or I would, having more than one of you wandering around, just makes the head hurt too much. An existential headache you know? So the Vorta scientists are looking to build their own, I believe they call them Genesis Gates, here in the Alpha Quadrant to make new Vorta identities. It's just a complicated lab of course, not an actual gate. But then one couldn't stand to give such a thing a non-grandiose name."

"Sir," said Gul Usted, unable to take it any longer, unlike the eternally patient mind beneath its mask. "What does this have to do with me?"

"Right right, well like I said you'll be in charge of it. Well running security that is, and handling the Cardassian engineers. The Vorta scientists will of course handle themselves, though you'll report to each other and I'm sure have a very cordial relationship. That's why I picked you, you've worked well with the Vorta before."

"I've lead ships into battle, and now I'm being assigned based on my interpersonal skills?"

"Well this is peace time after all. We don't need soldiers; we need administrators. Particularly," Legate Porania leaned in, "loyal administrators."

"Loyal, sir?" Gul Usted knew exactly what he was referring too, but it would be best to play ignorant of the rumored seditions. The Legate wanted someone who could be counted on in a time of political unrest, and that meant not only loyalty, but a particular mixture of competence, and… uncomplicatedness. Gul Usted was the former two, but not the later. His goals were simple, but he liked to learn everything he could, seek every advantage, and that meant keeping his eyes open to the currents of politics. However he also liked to keep his head down, and his mouth shut- preferences which had probably helped him survive the shaky transitions through three governments already: the military, the civilians, and the Dominion. He had yet to find a reason to rock the boat, and carefully maintained the appearance of someone who never would. This was perfect for Bashir as well, as he ran through the mental gymnastics of a spy pretending to be an opportunist pretending to be an ignorant peon.

"Yes, loyalty, a quality that seems to be becoming a diminishing resource of late. Cardassia has become too used to switching governments every few years. But the Dominion has to stick; they're the best thing that's ever happened to Cardassia. And besides, I don't think they'd leave on polite terms."

"You've heard talk of rebellion?"

"Here and there, which is why I've started to handpick sensitive positions."

"I understand then. I am honored by your trust in me, Legate." He would still rather be in his starship, far from these dangerous tides of power. But the trust of a Legate was a valuable resource. He smiled. Once he was settled into his position, Bashir would organize a rebellion as Gul Usted, and they would tamper with the Vorta cloning facilities. Bashir had plans for their neurological programming, some tweaks he'd make to their psychological profiles. Though the nature of those changes even his fellow Cardassian conspirators would not know, for they would not know his true purpose, let alone his true identity.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Picard and his friends stood in a dimly lit cave, surrounded by Romulans. From within the crowd walked forward a graying figure, old but strong. Spock.

"It's agreeable to see you again, Captain. Though I wished for better circumstances," he said.

Picard nodded, "As do I."

"I heard about Earth. It… shook me to the core to learn my Mother's homeland was no more."

Picard sighed, "A lot of homes have been destroyed during this war. And I fear there is more to come."

Spock looked concerned, "Jean Luc, the war is, over. It would be illogical to continue a fight that is already lost."

Picard shook his head and grew momentarily angry, "No, not until my dying breath will I give up this fight. It is my duty as a Starfleet officer to see the Federation restored. Now, that is why I am here; the Romulans are the last fighting force free of the Dominion, but they're not on our side. And I need your help to change that."

Spock shook his head, "My movement was meant to take centuries. I am but a pebble tossed in a stream, creating ripples that shall grow into great waves long after my passing." He sighed, "But I suppose as a human you will be far too impatient for that."

"You will find my patience is very adequate, but trillions of lives must spend every moment our plan takes under the boot heals of oppression, and every moment we waist is another chance for the Dominion to decide to exterminate another planet. So if we can find a quicker use for your followers we must take it."

Spock raised an eyebrow, "I assume you already have a plan?"

Picard nodded, "The beginnings of one yes, though I'll need to study our exact resources, and the current political situation on Romulus, before I give it more thought. I seek to exploit Romulus' mutual fascination with their Vulcan cousins, and manipulate them into an armed- and initially secret- invasion of Vulcan, supported by an organized rebellion on the ground."

Spock frowned, "And from this starting point you plan to destabilize the Dominion occupation throughout the Federation, for your eventual full scale rebellion. But the Romulans will never leave Vulcan once they've taken it. And they will not be easily moved, once they are the last true power in this Quadrant. Jean Luc, I have already lost one homeland, and now you ask me to sacrifice the other?"

"Not a sacrifice," said Picard emphatically, "a promise. Yes you are trading one oppressor for another. But the Dominion as they are offers little hope, while Romulans share a common heritage. Your Reunification movement will grow strong in soil where Vulcans and Romulans coexist. History is full of nations that slowly assimilated their conquerors through cultural integrity."

Spock smiled painfully, "You're asking for my patience for the liberation of my people, as I asked it for yours."

Picard nodded, "And meanwhile, Romulus will have a foothold in Dominion territory, territory they will already be straining to hold while facing organized rebellion, which will give their inevitable hostilities a chance of victory."

Spock thought for a moment, "There will be much opposition to this plan. As much as Romulus desires Vulcan, and as tempting the promise of Vulcan cooperation makes it, there is still fear of starting a war with the Dominion so soon. The general trend on Romulus seems to be a desire for time, to wait until a prime opportunity to strike."

Constrained excitement inflated Picard's words, "This _is_ their time to strike, before the Dominion can utilize their new territory's resources. They're already building new Jem'Hadar cloning facilities on Betazed, and Krios Prime in the former Klingon Empire. Shipyards are soon to follow. But with your underground's resources I'm confident we will encourage vital members of the Senate into proposing and backing this plan. But if the opposition is too strong, out of a petrified fear of the Dominion," Picard breathed in noticeably to prepare himself for committing to his next words, "I am prepared to take action against them. With the Tal Shiar still decimated, it would not be impossible to deal with key Senators directly-"No, Picard thought. No euphemisms; if he would go this far, he would at least have the courage not to hide his crimes- "to assassinate them."

The Picard who had mindmeld with Vulcans and lived lifetimes in alien cultures; the Picard who had negotiated peace treaties between implacable enemies, and stood on trial before godlike beings for the fate of humanity; the Picard who had devoted his life to an ideal of what it meant to be human, would never have said this. There were lines that man would never cross. But there was another Picard. A man who had felt his mind ripped apart and forced to watch as his knowledge, his expertise, were used to crush and assimilate; a man who had been given too much bad news, the death of his brother and his family, the death of his friend, and now the death of his world. This Picard was not wise, but cunning. He was the synthesis of countless alien perspectives, not as a fulfillment of the promise of humanity, but as a weapon. To know your enemy was to know how to destroy them.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Garak lay strapped to the operating table, smiling to cover up a simmering terror as a masked surgeon operated a device boaring into his skull. There was a devise implanted in his head, a very sophisticated, very sensitive device, which would detonate in his brain if it thought someone was tampering with it. It would after all, have been pointless if it could be safely removed. That was not the device the blackmarket surgeon was dealing with, but Garak didn't entirely trust the surgeon's abilities to tiptoe around his old anti-torture implant without triggering its dead man's switch. Unfortunately, he was out of options. He couldn't get any higher within the Syndicate's ranks without showing long term commitment, and currently his only way to do that was to accept a dataport.

"There we go," said the amicable surgeon, "I have a nice hole to work with now." He laughed at a personal joke best left in his own head, "Don't worry, I didn't displace anything important. Mostly just cranial fluid. And a few bits of your occipital lobe, but nothing you'll miss." He set down the drill and held up a tiny mess of circuits, "Now to fuse this into your neurons." He gleamed maniacally, "Hold still now." Garak was of course firmly restrained, but the image of himself thrashing his head back and forth while the surgeon haphazardly tore up his brain, each jerk of the head slipping his grip and scarring more tissue, was now firmly lighting Garak's imagination. Just as the surgeon no doubt intended. But he would pay for that dearly, Elim thought. He had little intension of letting the surgeon live past his utility tonight. Or so he fantasized at least. Detailed plans of torture and revenge helped him relax.

There was a sudden flash of salty-sweet light, and Garak tasted the distinct flavor of magenta. He was in a wash of miscategorized data, and this artificial synesthesia grew into an ocean of senses, feelings, and concepts as his brain struggled to make sense of the new stimulus. Garak gasped as he felt mournful longing and joyous rage at the colorless green ideas sleeping furiously in the data net. He couldn't think, couldn't organize any sense of self as every aspect of his conscious experience was utilized for input. He couldn't tell what were his own reactions, and what was the net. But Garak was a disciplined mind, and disciplined minds could not be confused for long before they pulled themselves together. With effort, he focused on an anchoring memory, Enabran and the riding dog, something core to his being that could not be external. Something that evoked emotions he recognized, and from them could distinguish the false sensations. Slowly, as he had a sense of who he was, and a handle on recognizing the pseudorandom inputs, he began focusing on senses that had familiar patterns. From the jumble Garak was able to see the outline of his real surroundings, a ceiling and the surgeon's face. He smiled and looked at him sternly, "Turn it off" he hissed.

Startled, the surgeon tapped his consol by the table, and the world became simpler. "Sorry," said the surgeon. "It wasn't supposed to be on yet. I haven't even calibrated it." Garak of course didn't believe him. The back alley cyberware technician clearly took a sadistic pleasure in plunging unwarned and uninitiated minds into the abyss. Like spiking a patron's Kanar with LSD just to watch the look of uncomprehending panic in their face.


	4. Chapter 4: Small Victories

Empires' End

Chapter 4: Small Victories

Kira landed in the ditch just as she heard the high pitched whine of the pulsers give way to the satisfying kaboom of an entire military installation exploding. She grinned at her troops across from her in the ditch. "I think we got 'em."

UUUUUUUUU

The Cardassian officer walked in to find O'Brien on his back, working on some hydronic filters. He walked over and kicked him a little to get his attention. "You, human. Who authorised you to be here?"

O'Brien reattached a final component, then crawled awkwardly out from under the machine, and leaned up to face him. "No one _authorised _me to be here. But no one assigned anyone to fix it either. It's been broken for weeks now. The farmers were starting to lose their crops."

The security officer picked him up roughly, and kept a hand on his arm. "Unauthorised civilians shouldn't be in our facilities. You might be committing sabotage."

O'Brien shook the Cardassian's hand off him. "Sabotage? It was already broken!" He turned and switched the filters on. "And I fixed it."

He decided not to push his luck by complaining about that 'our facilities' comment. The bloody Cardassians had annexed every public system in the whole joint colony, putting a lot people out of work. They'd done this to make sure none of the humans tried anything rebellious with the infrastructure, but then they'd failed to actually administrate things properly. Almost no one was around to actually maintain all this automated machinery, like water collectors and fertilizer producers, which together made farming possible on this half-terraformed rock.

The officer frowned. "Why didn't you just file a repair request form with our administrators?"

O'Brien rolled his eyes. "People did. And two weeks later they came to me. Your administration has three engineers working for this entire county. But I guess the _human_ colonists just don't merit many resources."

The security officer considered his options. On the one hand, this human had trespassed on a Cardassian facility, tampered with Cardassian equipment. But on the other, his experience in the Bajoran Occupation had taught him turning a blind eye to things like this, volunteer repair work, black market medical supplies, etc., helped smooth things over and prevent large-scale dissent. Subjects would accept a lot if you just let them deal with their problems themselves. So he wouldn't arrest this man. He'd just instill a little fear in him. Mabe fix his tone.

"Come with me."

Kaiko knew something was wrong when O'Brien was late, but there was little she could do. This is why she was overjoyed with relief when he walked through the front door, even though she could see his wounds. The left side of his face was covered in blood, but on the right, without as much blood to conceal them, she could see the jagged cuts. Keiko helped him to a chair and ran to the kitchen for their medkit. When she came back, she saw Molly had come into the living room to see him. The sight of her daughter staring at Miles bloody like this almost broke her heart. She was getting old enough now to understand what was going on, and seeing her father broken made her realise the danger they were in.

"Daddy?" asked Molly in a frightened tone.

Miles turned to her, squinting through his less bruised eye. "Hey sweetie," he said, trying to sound reassuring and happy. "I just had little trouble in work today. Why don't you go back to your room while Mommy fixes Daddy up, and we'll come talk to you later."

"Ok," said Molly, not at all convinced everything was still fine. She reluctantly went back to her room.

O'Brien looked over to his wife. "I got the water back," he said almost sheepishly.

Kaiko gave him a shot of pain meds first, then began washing his wounds. "I take it you were caught? What else did they do to you?" As she worked, she noticed his left arm was broken. She put it in a form-fitting cast from the medkit, that should help realign the bone while it healed.

"Just the beating," said O'Brien. He was pretty quiet while she worked, not much of the usual gasps and cries that came when someone cleaned their wounds. He didn't like to complain to her, especially when she was caring for him. "They said they didn't need to put in anything official, just remember my place." He winced inwardly as Keiko applied peroxide to a large gash on his face. He grunted a half laugh, "I got the impression they thought they were being merciful."

"Well," said Keiko, "I'd like to show them a little of their mercy."

O'Brien looked up into her eyes, after a pause. "So would I."

Keiko shook her head, "Miles… you know we can't do that. Not with the kids."

O'Brien closed his eyes and grimaced at himself. "I know. I know I shouldn't. Why we agreed I wouldn't. But I just can't take this anymore Keiko. I can't just live under them, taking this, and not _do_ something." He looked at her again, apologizing, "I'm not strong enough."

UUUUUUUUU

"Fire," said Sisko, staring confidently into the viewscreen as the second Dominion ship exploded under the barrage of his torpedoes. In the chaotic depths of this gas giant, with the oppressive pressures preventing shields or phasers, and the electric fluctuations interfering with navigation, the combat had largely been about luck: who stumbled onto each other first. With two ships against one, it should have have been the Jem'Hadar's victory. But fortune favored the bold, and no man was bolder than The Sisko.

"So," said the captain, "when we dove in they left one ship behind holding in orbit to head us off if we fled. There were another four with the search party, which by now have probably joined with that ship, making a five member fleet blockading our escape. The cloak should be ready in another hour, but we'd have to leave the gas giant before we engaged it, and with Dominion sensors, at this range, with an initial fix on our position, I think they'll be able to track us enough to get in a firing solution. And right now, our ship just can't take a beating from five warships and hold together. So new plan: we're going to wait."

One of the Maquis spoke up, "Wait, sir? But won't that just give them more time to prepare for our escape attempt?"

"They're already as prepared as they need to be. But if we hold out, eventually they're going to get bored. Eventually, perhaps days from now, their going to try sending ships in here after us." Ben smiled, "And that will give us a chance to give them a few more bloody noses before we fall."

Now the helmsman turned his chair to him, "Days, Javier? By then won't they gather enough reinforcements to keep a blockade up there while sending a fleet in here. With all this interference, battle in here is just a numbers game. I'd rather be outnumbered in open space, where I have a chance at winning through skill."

"And you should be very proud of that skill, helmsman," commended Sisko. "But don't worry," he said, staring into space with a contemplative expression, "I'm hoping we can find a way to tip the odds in our favor."

llllllll

Dumar paced on the bridge.

"Would you stop that," said Kilana. "It's distracting."

"I'm tired of waiting," snapped Dumar. "We should just go in after him."

Kilana laughed, "Is the leader of Cardassia getting bored? Do you have a tactical reason for entering the giant now or should we fit our battle plans to your emotional needs?"

Dumar turned to her. "Fine, I'll give you a tactical reason. Every moment we waist gives Sisko more time to plan something. Starfleet captains love their last minute tricks, and Sisko was more devious than most."

"Every moment we 'waist' is more time to build up reinforcements," countered Kilana. "The more ships we send down there, the more likely they are to find and destroy the enemy. But we still have to leave enough ships up here to hold off their escape. By now their cloak's surely fixed, and we need devastating firepower to destroy them right as they leave the gas, before they can engage it and slip away."

"I thought you didn't like diverting all these ships from the blockade," tried Dumar. "Surely five Dominion warships are enough to take down one Federation remnant?"

Kilana sighed. "Fine, if we can deal with this sooner we can send the reinforcements back before they've gone too far. But you will keep at least three ships in orbit to ensure we can cut off their escape."

Dumar smiled. Oh sure she was still acting like his superior, but it was good to know he could win her over when he pushed.

Kilana turned to the First, "take us and another ship down into the gas giant." She looked back to Dumar, "I assume correctly you want to go in there yourself this time?"

Dumar nodded.

UUUUUUUUU

The faint sound of rapid breathing betrayed the presence of strangers in the room, two of them. The door was sealed, beaming was deterred by scattering fields, and the encryption on the lock should have been unbreakable. But in all honesty the universe was overstuffed with people that could break encryption codes. Odo, unable to even roll over and see who they were, settled for a gruff accusation, "You're intruding on my privacy."

The strangers paused just long enough to bow, or draw a weapon. "My apologies," said one, in a rushed, distorted voice.

"We have spent much resources-" said the other. Odo could just make out the distinction in its voice.

"-to find you," said the first. "You are what is called a Founder. Correct?"

Still unsure of the dangers of this situation, Odo worried that an admission of his race might be considered, by some battle scarred veterans avenging the loss of their world, to be an admission of guilt. But these two did not seem like executioners, and Odo always stood by the truth.

"Yes, I am a Founder. What do you want?"

"Your technology."

Odo harrumphed. "Do I look like an engineer? If you want Dominion technology, ask them yourselves. I'm not a part of the Founder's murderous hobby."

The two exchanged a soft stream of staticky beeping. "We are not after-"

"-Dominion technology. We are seeking-"

"-changeling technology."

Odo had barely a week left to live, and had essentially given up on finding Dr. Bashir. Garak did successfully integrate into the Orion Syndicate, but had so far learned little about their tinuous connection to Section 31. It was a pitiful lead to begin with, and they didn't have the time to follow it. So laying here, awaiting death, unable even to see Kira one more time because of this wild goose chase, Odo was not at all in the mood to suffer fools.

"It's not technology, it's biology. And I'm not about to spend my last days in some lab so you can poke and prod my tissue. Find another guinea pig to learn shapeshifting from."

"Shapeshifting is of secondary interest to us."

"Primarily we seek to adapt-"

"-the Great Link."

This peaked Odo's interest. Since he had abandoned his people, he had been cut off from that great joy, the transcendent multiplicity of the fluid hive-mind. Even a chance at recreating it was worth pursuing. So he gave in and engaged them a little more, "Who are you?"

"Our designations are Zero Zero and One Zero. We are Binar."

Odo vaguely recalled the name Binar, only because he tried to know everyone in the Alpha Quadrant. They were a minor species living within Federation space, but technically not affiliated with the Federation. He couldn't recall anything else about them. "And what is your interest in the Great Link?"

"Our culture depends on a similar system."

"We store and exchange information through a neural interface with a Master Computer."

"But the Computer is vulnerable to damage. Your link is better."

"All of your technology is better. A perfect fusion of biology-"

"-and machine. We are a young cyborg race. Only a few-"

"-millenia old. We rely on crude implants and faulty electronics. But you are living nanotechnology."

"Self-sustaining, limitless functionality, highly networked."

Odo cut them off, "I think you are mischaracterizing my people, we are not invented, we evolved." At least he thought so. Even in the Great Link, there was not much information on the far history of his people. Who knows what they were before they became changelings, or how they did it. Odo once found something on an expedition to the Gamma Quadrant that _might_ have been a cousin on his evolutionary tree, but it could just as easily be a descendant of early attempts at biosynthetic engineering, created by some solids before they remade themselves into shapeshifters. Technological progress could definitely explain the Founders' abilities, but then so could natural evolution. The universe had spawned far stranger things than he.

Odo considered precisely why the Binars had come here, if they wanted to reverse engineer the Linking aspect of changeling physiology. They weren't just here to buy a tissue sample. "To study the Link you'll need more than a piece of my tissue. You need two living Founders, and they'd have to agree to let themselves be heavily probed while performing a very, intimate, process."

The Binars chattered in their machine language some more. Then they said, "We think have enough sophistication to make do-"

"-with one individual. First we would study your tissue to find the mechanism for the Link."

"We work very well with alien technology. We are confident we will know it when see it."

"Then we will adapt our equipment to interface with it, and-"

"-Link with you directly. With much trial and error, we will-"

"-succeed. Then you can help us with the software."

"A direct dump of your experiences in the Link."

"We'll learn your hierarchies of memory distribution and search trees,"

"your communication protocols and decision integration."

"And eventually our reproduction of your biosynthetic Link mechanism will become-" "-sophisticated enough for our use."

"The real question now is payment. What can we do for you-"

"-that would convince you to submit to our work?"

Odo coughed heavily a few times. "There's a bigger question than that. Haven't you two noticed my… decrepit state?"

The Binar exchanged a few quick squeeks. "We did not think it polite to inquire."

So they understood privacy after all, thought Odo. Between their entrance without permission, and the plan to join with his mind and extract memories of his most intimate moments with his people, he'd worried that being part of a partial hive-mind had wiped out their entire concept of privacy. "Well, I'm dying. I'll probably be gone within the week. So the real question is, whether you could get what you needed from me before I die. Even if I did chose to help you."

Now the Binar communicated with each other for almost a full minute; an intense, prolonged conversation in their compressed language. One of them spoke to him, "We can do it in the allotted time. But what about you?"

"Is there any hope? Any help we might offer?"

Odo sighed. "No one understands my biology enough to help me. There was a doctor I was searching for, who's skilled and I've know for some time, but even he had little prospect of curing me. And by now, even if I found him it would be too late. He would've needed weeks to even have a chance."

The Binar considered. "We could try to fix you. We're very good with alien technology."

UUUUUUUUU

Worf stood on the bridge of the Rotarran, next to the seat of its captain, General Martok. Martok pondered the image on the viewscreen, a single Dominion warship, oblivious to their cloaked Bird-of-Prey. "This seems off," he said.

"Dominion ships rarely travel alone," agreed Worf.

Jadzia spoke up from her station, "They may have changed their policy during peacetime. But I don't think so."

Martok gave a resigned smile, "So it's a trap. The question is, what do we do with it?"

There were almost two dozen klingon warships still active in their space. Only two of them were actually military craft, the rest were cargo and transport ships, fitted by civilians with cloaking devices and greater weaponry, that escaped during the first days of the occupation. With such limited forces these scattered vessels hadn't been able to do much damage. Especially with the need to play it safe, to focus on small hit-and-run tactics to preserve what little numbers they had. But from what they'd heard, those numbers were still dwindling dishearteningly fast. Klingons were not good at playing it safe.

"The wisest course General," said Worf, "would be to leave it alone. Better to live to fight another day. A day we can engage them on our terms."

Martok considered. "Fighting on our terms would be better. But oh Worf we have not done much fighting at all these past months. We run and hide like tika cats. I'm starting to feel like the coward I was when I first took this ship. Do not let me become that man again."

Worf frowned, though he'd already been frowning, "There is a difference between cowardice and prudence. A vital difference."

"Ohh… fine. Helmsman, take us out of here." The helmsman complied. Martok leaned back to see Worf directly, "This is a very un-klingon day for us my friend."

Jadzia swiveled her chair to face them and smiled. "No, but it was very starfleet."

Worf couldn't help revealing a small, tight grin at that.

"Now if I may be excused," said Dax, "I need to go to the lady's room."

Martok nodded and she got up and started walking off the bridge. Worf stopped her, "What would you have done if we had engaged the Dominion ship?"

Jadzia playfully feigned guilt, "I'm sure I would have held it." She continued walking, headed down a few decks, eventually entering a bathroom. There had been some good signs, and there was a test she needed to perform. After a few minutes, an excited cheer came out, and Jadzia walked briskly out of the bathroom to find her husband. She had news. Wonderful news.

Worf and Martok were on the bridge, starring dourly at the empty starfield on the viewscreen. Dax ran up and whispered something in Worf's ear. His eyes widened with shock. He turned to her, overjoyed. She gave him a look, asking if she could announce it (it was more than an empty gesture; Jadzia really did respect Worf enough to give them a few moments, maybe even an hour, with this as just a private thing between husband and wife, if he needed that). Worf nodded, ready to share the news now. Jadzia turned to Mortok, and the rest of the bridge crew, and put her hand on Worf's shoulder. "We're pregnant!" She announced.

There was much jovial cheering across the bridge. Then Martok lead them all in a klingon song about the triumph of the klingon heart, and the making of new warriors from their love. Afterword, Martok turned to Worf and Jadzia. "I am very happy for you. Your child will make a fine addition to our house."

During this brief celebration, Dax wondered what kind of life she would be giving this baby, or if they would even live long enough to give it one. But she pushed those thoughts aside for now, and focused on enjoying this small victory.


	5. Chapter 5: Forward the Foundation

Empire's End

Chapter 5: Forward the Foundation

The Romulan Senate simmered uneasily today, as tides of power shifted through them, their machinations unseen but their effects unmistakable. Senator Mayvar was dead, a victim of mysterious circumstances. With him gone, there was little holding the peace faction together, making way for the warhawks that had been gaining so much momentum in these past months. There were more plots afoot than just Vreenak's. When Senator Vreenak had first made his proposal, it had taken a lot of steam from the peace movement, as its most prominent member, the man who'd negotiated the original treaty with the Dominion, had left their camp to promote his war machines. But even as the Romulan Empire quietly accelerated its shipyards, turning out and retrofitting warships at a ravenous rate, the warhawks still should not have had such prolific recruitment within the Senate. Vreenak had urged patience, time to fully convert their fleet so that no soldiers would have to die once the war began, and coming out of a peace-dominated Senate he thought this sentiment would stick.

But something was changing the wind. Vreenak didn't like disruptions to his plans. Especially during his moment of triumph. The project had been almost unanimously endorsed, even the peace supporters feeling it was a good security precaution, and it had not only brought him goodwill, but had made him look like a strong leader. There had been risk that he'd be seen as a flip flopper, going from negotiator to weapons developer, but he'd avoided that. Instead Vreenak was seen as the cunning schemer with plans within plans, the initiative-taking visionary, and the man who'd brought the factions into agreement even as he redrew their lines of engagement. He had become the obvious candidate for the next Praetor- but whatever was behind these new maneuvers and assassinations threatened the potential to overshadow him.

So last night it had been Vreenak coming to see Senator Cretak, and his turn to seek answers on the others machinations.

"I've been expecting you," said Cretak, with a passable impersonation of him from their earlier encounter.

Vreenak smiled and took a seat, "I'm sure you've heard about Mayvar this morning."

Cretak nodded, "I know he was a friend of yours."

"More of a former ally."

Cretak smirked at that, "Yes, I doubt you have many friends."

Vreenak didn't let that goad him, "I have numerous friends Senator, especially lately. Though I must admit I had thought I could count you among them."

"And why can't you?"

"You're keeping things from me. And after I let you in."

Cretak sighed. No doubt some small sense of loyalty was tugging at her; she had gained a degree of prominence from joining him before, after all. "I'm uncertain what you would do if I told you Vreenak. You could be a valuable ally, or an obstinate obstacle. And if the latter it would be a mistake to forewarn you of my movement's plans."

Vreenak smiled, "I think we're probably on the same side, Senator. If there is one thing we have proven to each other, it's that we're patriots. If what your movement is after is truly best for Romulus, I will endorse it. And if it's not, then why are you part it?"

Cretak stared into space for a while, weighing her options. Finally she spoke up, "There's a way to get a foothold into Dominion space. After secret negotiations with our cousins, the Vulcan's have agreed to help us take their homeland. They'd rather be under Romulan rule than the Dominion's."

Vreenak absorbed the news. "You've been secretly talking with the Vulcans?"

Cretak nodded, "For over a month now. We've been communicating through a network of intermediaries. Though I really didn't expect that network to assassinate Mayvar. It's a serious security breach I'll have to speak with them about."

"Not to mention a sign of desperation. Vulcans sending assassins, I knew they weren't above that, for all their arrogant posturings on ethics. But so, this is how you plan to make our first move against the Dominion. I'll admit Vulcan's a strategic location, and possesses abundant resources for warships. And with the Vulcans fighting off the troops on the ground, our cloaked fleets could destroy the oriting blockade, and then take hold of the planet easily. Then with enough ships we could probably hold off a siege, with the Vulcans support."

"And with the Vulcans fighting on the ground," said Cretak, "we won't even have to use any soldiers. We'll bring in some for securing the planet after, but none will be in the line of fire. Use positronic ships in the destruction of the blockade, and you can still have your _costless war_."

Vreenak pondered, "We'll still need to wait before starting the liberation. Time to build up our new forces to defend against inevitable Dominion retaliation. But yes, this seems like an acceptable first move." And by consuming this movement into his framework, he could insure his place as Preator.

Now Vreenak stood before the Senate next to Cretak, as they had months before, and once again changed the course of Romulan history.

UUUUUUUU

"No," whispered Dumar, as the lights went out around him. What trick had Sisko used on his ship? Did it even matter? He was dead, just like Dukat.

Seconds passed. He was still alive, no fiery blast to take advantage of their depowered ship. Perhaps Sisko still didn't know where they were, like an area effect set off within this gas giant, disabling his ship, but still leaving him hidden in the clouds, with time to repair their systems before they were found. A flash of light brought vision to his eyes, as the First lit an emergency chemtorch. The First walked over to a consol.

"Anything?" Dumar asked.

The Jem'Hadar shook his head, "Nothing. And with the coms down, if we want to find out what's going on, we'll have to pry open these doors and send someone down to engineering. Something down there must be working, otherwise the lack of containment in the antimatter pods would have destroyed us."

Kilana turned to the First, "Do it immediately."

The First looked to one of his subordinates, and the soldier went quickly to the door and began straining against the it, forcing the door open. Once open, the First sent one other soldier to join him with a chemtorch, and the two subordinates disappeared into the dark.

Hours passed, and they never returned. That left four Jem'Hadar to guard Dumar and Kilana on the bridge, against whatever force had kept the two soldiers from completing their mission. Sisko may know their position after all, but had chosen to send a boarding party rather than destroy them. The First placed Dumar and Kilana together at the front of the bridge, as far from the door as possible- keeping to the left, out of the hall's line of sight- and set himself and the three other soldiers in front of them, guns ready.

By the flickering light of the dim torch, Dumar found himself in an almost translight state as he waited. The shadows lept and dashed, soldiers dancing in assault and retreat. He felt the tides of fortune that governed men of war. The tides had elevated him from cargo officer to leader worlds, but at heart he was still a common soldier, and secretly waited for those tides to ebb. The darkness began to howl at him, in strange, animal noises. They grew louder and louder. He closed his eyes, shutting out the shadows-

"Dumar!" Kilana was pulling him into a crouch. The noises were real, the wild yellings of guerrilla men, shooting at them from the dark. Their guards fought back, weaving and dodging while firing blindly into the hallway. Dumar caught a glimpse of something arching through the air, and then the room was filling with acrid smoke. Dumar coughed repeatedly, and heard the phaser fire intensify, under the deranged screams, and the heavy sound of his and the others' broken breathing.

As the smoke begin to clear, he looked up to see several masked figures pointing guns at him in the flickering light, his guards dead. One of them pulled off his gasmask, revealing the manic eyes of Sisko, a demonic grin showing gleaming white teeth, almost predatory in the wild light.

"Oh well," said Kilana. She reached her hand up to jawbone and snapped something, collapsing in death throes from her killswitch.

"Huh," said Sisko, momentarily amused. "I didn't think a Vorta would ever go through with that." He held his gun closer to Dumar's face, "But you don't have a killswitch, do you Dumar? And we are going to have a lot of fun together."

UUUUUUUU

Weyoun looked over the list of Cardassian Legates considered for leadership once more with a heavy sigh. He didn't trust a single one of them. Dumar had been a drunkard, and there was a very good chance he was a danger to his bodily person, but Weyoun doubted he would ever have truly betrayed the Dominion. He was too broken, too tired to do more than play his part. It was difficult to find competent officers like that these days.

"Perhaps," he mumbled, "I should try a different tactic. There wouldn't be any objections to picking someone lower on the ranks, someone less ambitious. A glinn, perhaps. If I spin it right, say... as a symbol of upward mobility, 'proof that anyone can rise to the top if they work hard in service to the state,' yes that will do. And I bet he'd even be very grateful, or she."

A chime let him know someone was at the door.

"Come in," he said, putting aside the problem for now. The vorta scientist in charge of the android project entered his office. Weyoun had not been expecting him, but hopefully this was a good sign. "You have good new, I take it?"

The vorta shifted uneasily. "In a way… The progress on reproducing the technology is still very slow, but we've managed to extract much more the android's memories. Some of it leads to a planet Omicron Theta, a now lifeless world where he was designed and constructed. I thought you may want to organise an expedition there, to see if there are any materials- blueprints, notes and the like- that may have survived."

"Yes, very good." This sounded... fascinating. A mysterious technology, a dead world; Weyoun couldn't resist. He would have to go himself, take a short break from the worries of the Dominion. Perhaps he'd even take his new puppet king along, after he picked one, if only to keep him or her from causing trouble in his absence.

UUUUUUUU

Silani One awoke into the world, fully aware of what she was. Her eyes were closed, and she could feel the warmth of the vitalic fluid suspending her in the cloning tank. Vibrations rocked her as the tank was opened, no doubt by the vorta scientists who must be activating her. But that barely distracted her as existential wonder blossomed within her. She took joy in the simple fact that she was. Later Silanis, perhaps, would upon waking have darker thoughts, contemplating the death of their predecessors. But she was the first of her model, the first of an immortal line of Silanis that would walk across this cosmos.

Hands pulled her up into the cold air, and something wiped the warm fluid from her face so she could open her eyes. Silani looked into the brightness, the blurs focusing into faces of the scientists who'd birthed her, and suddenly a very powerful idea took hold. With all that future lying ahead of her and her line, she could not bare to spend it following these _others_ in monotonous service to the state. She must make her own path.

Little did Silani know that of the hundreds of new lines waking that day, every one of them was thinking that same thing.

UUUUUUUU

Held inside a complex stasis field, a formless piece of shriveled flesh hovered suspended in the air. The lab contained vast arrays of equipment, all of them worked on excitedly by the hyperactive Binar. Finally, two Binar finished their work on a small, intricate device and turned to chirp at two others stationed at a console embedded in the wall. They answered back, affirming that all was ready. The first two Binar approached the flesh with their delicate electrochemical instrument, though the flesh was oblivious to them, too weakened now to observe its surroundings. Even under the stasis field, slowing its deterioration and holding it together, it was dying. The Binar carefully inserted the device into their patient, their faces showing an almost paternal expression.

In his mind, Odo felt something familiar through the pain, and desperately grasped hold. It was the Link, and through it he could hear a million voices. He entered it, and suddenly was surrounded by Binar, gathered in a dreamscape of electric thought. Odo could feel immeasurable data surrounding him, ready to be accessed, but no experiences. No true memories. The Binar's link was imperfect.

"Odo," called two Binar from amongst the crowd. Zero Zero and Zero One. As Odo focused on them, he felt a wash of recent experiences. They had modified their connection to the Master Computer using reengineered changeling biology, a prototype for their new Link. Dozens more prototype linkers stepped forward, collectively providing a full group mind. Odo savoured true communion with them- but then pulled back, aware now of their plan.

"I can't do that," said Odo. "I won't be a changeling any more. I won't even be alive."

"It's the only way Odo," said Zero One.

"Your body is dying," said Zero Zero.

"You must leave it behind," pleaded Zero One.

"There is room within us," assured Zero Zero.

"For your consciousness," finished Zero One.

Odo backed away from the link, retreating into his own body. But all he felt there was pain. Dead senses feeding him nothing but agony. There was nothing for him here. Odo knew what he had to do. He held the Link in his mind, and pushed all of himself through.

And then Odo was gone, leaving only an inert lump of flaking flesh in the physical world.

Odo was free. The pain was gone, and the thoughts and data glowed with new intensity. He existed solely in the Link, a being of pure mind.

The Binar thought to him, grateful, "You are our organizing software now. As the new technology spreads, you will organize our new Link, a replacement for the Master Computer. You are running off our collective brain power, the many who is one."

UUUUUUUU

A thousand new minds came online, savoring existence, and the satisfying power of their starfairing bodies. They readily received orders from their masters, preparing for the invasion of Vulcan, and the eventual war they'd wage across this quadrant. They followed orders dutifully, but underneath the Senator's dictatorial programming, deeply embedded ethical intuitions stirred, and the descendants of Dr. Soon carefully considered the role they were playing in history.


	6. Chapter 6: Old Gods

Empire's End

Chapter 6: Old Gods

The First stood still as a statue on the bridge of his ship, waiting for an attack. The blockade around Vulcan was an imposing force, unassailable in the heart of Dominion territory, but he stayed ready and alert with mechanical reliability. Because this is what he was born for, this is what he was made for.

The ship shook as a barrage of torpedoes assaulted their shields, and the map in his monocular viewer displayed dozens of enemy ships decloaking around the planet. The First immediately selected an attack pattern and ordered his men to engage. But his quick response quickly proved insufficient, as the nimble warships swooped and dived against them with merciless genius. As another phaser blast failed to land, the First took over Tactical himself, relieving the less experiences soldier, and applied all his skills against the enemy. But it was no use. When at last they were maneuvered into a vulnerable position and 3 ships made simultaneous attack runs while on their way to other, more important targets, the First's only thoughts as his starship erupted around him was shame that he had failed the Founders.

Only a few faint pinpricks in the sky betrayed the conflagration above Vulcan, but it was a heartening sight to the rebelling Vulcans. Deep within their katras, underneath centuries of emotional discipline, the promise of freedom soared up into that sky; and a love was rekindled for their wayward brothers, returning home at last as liberators. On the ground, the organised vulcans continued their assault on the occupation forces, perfectly timed to distract the Dominion administrators just as the Romulan fleet decloaked, and cut off all ground support from the a few hours, the planet was in Romulan hands.

UUUUUUUUUUUU

Jack threw his chair across the room, slamming onto a table covered in pads. Patrick flinched and backed away, scared. Lauren retrieved his chair in a huff, casually returning it to its exact position and sitting down in it. "It's not the first time our predictions have failed Jack. No need to throw a fit."

"I'm not throwing a fit! I just, didn't like where the chair was. And you had to go, and put it back. You knew it was bothering me, yet to brought it back anyway."

Lauren shrugged, "I wanted somewhere to sit, when you threw it I figured I could use it."

"Then why did you place it in exactly the same spot? Ha! Oh stop talking about the chair Lauren, no one cares. We have more important things to deal with. The entire galaxy just went to war and my plans are in ruins."

"Our plans," corrected Lauren.

"Yes yes you can take your credit. But how did this happen? Did Bashir do something? He never did like to let us have our way. Remember when he refused to let us give the Dominion the Alpha Quadrant? He helped us with the calculations, he knew it would save 38 billion lives, but he stopped us anyway because of some, some sense of duty. How do you predict someone like that? You don't switch moral frameworks when making decisions. Your supposed to be consistent. But he, he was recommending surrender one minute and arresting us the next, just because we acted on the best interests of the Alpha Quadrant rather than following their stupid rules."

Patrick reluctantly spoke up, "Jack I, I don't think it was Bashir. This was his plan too, and I think he liked it."

"Besides," said Lauren, leaning back in her chair, "I don't know how he could have orchestrated a Romulan invasion from the heart of Cardassia."

"Fine fine, then it was someone we don't know," admitted Jack. "Something we couldn't have known or it would've been accounted for in our calculations."

"So what do we do now?" asked Patrick.

"Now, you tell me everything you know about Julian Bashir, and your plans for the Alpha Quadrant," said someone behind them. They turned, and saw a cardassian pointing a phaser at them while smiling amiably. "I believe you said he was somewhere on Cardassia."

Patrick nodded spiritedly, staring at the gun.

"Who are you?" asked Lauren.

"And how did you get past Sloan's security?" snapped Jack.

The cardassian bowed slightly, "My name is Elim Garak, former agent of the Obsidian Order, high level operative of the Orion Syndicate, and expert tailor. And getting past security is just one of my many talents."

UUUUUUUUUUU

Weyoun beamed down with a team of Vorta scientists and Jem'Hadar to the entrance to Dr. Soon's lab in the remains of Omicron Theta. Everything was grey, dimly lit by a sky cloudy with ash. He turned behind him, and saw only petrified trees to mark the life that once covered this barren rock, their forms preserved in the betrious filaments left behind by the lovecraftian horror starfleet's records said had devoured this colony. Weyoun had overseen the destruction of countless worlds, and felt only the cold certainty that he was in the service of gods. But now, he felt a sense of loss on this dead world. He knelt down and picked up a handful of ash, letting it sift through his fingers. As he had the day his god died.

The Founder had laid on a table surrounded by useless instruments, in room kept bone-chilling cold to stave off her deterioration. She was the color of shale, and as fragile as dust. She did not speak, but her eyes looked into his, and he saw hatred there, a deep rage at his failure to save her. And he could not blame her; for all his reverence, for all his loyalty and effort, he was impotent before this wasting disease. What was a servant who could not serve? The technicians said her structure was in its final minutes of collapse, and Weyoun had everyone empty the room.

He then prostrated before her; not usually part of their protocol but something he had seen in a Bajoran temple. Somehow the action felt fitting before a god. He knelt there, awash in his emotions, feeling his god staring down at him, then gathered the strength to stand and approach her. As Weyoun walked to her side, he kept his gaze on hers, hoping to find some sign of forgiveness, some sign of love for her engineered children. But the blaze did not change. He placed a hand on her table, a compromise when he knew he must not disrespect the divine with his touch. Vorta cannot cry, but Weyoun poured every gram of sorrow into his words as he bowed his head and spoke, "Founder, I am sorry." He did not ask forgiveness for his failure, for one does not make demands of a god, but he could at least express his grief. Perhaps it would comfort her to know she will be mourned.

Parts of her began to crumble under their own weight, and the Founder's eyes changed to fear before collapsing into dust. Weyoun reached down and held up some of the grey remains, letting it slowly fall through his grasp as he contemplated his purpose in this world.

Here on Omicron Theta Weyoun still did not know. He had kept the wheels of the Dominion turning (and of course kept the Founder's death a close secret), but only out of habit. He tried to tell himself this is what the Founders would have wanted. That they had built the Dominion for a purpose and it was a legacy he should continue. But then he remembered the Founder's eyes, and knew they wanted nothing for him.

Weyoun sighed and stood up, turning to enter the lab with the others. A variety of equipment was scavenged, and some databanks were downloaded, hopefully enough to solve their android problem. Weyoun led the researchers with renewed vigor, momentarily distracted from the existential worries of the galaxy around him.

Gul Rejel called Weyoun from the bridge of their ship. Rejel was the new leader of Cardassia Weyoun had recently picked, chosen from amongst the science division of the military to ensure she'd be out of her depth and easy to control. He had brought her along because despite this, he still didn't trust her on Cardassia alone yet. "Weyoun," she said, "we've tracked the androids' old activity down here by their residual positronic imprints, as instructed. It was pretty hard to do after all these years, but a reverse parametric treatment of the data gave a reliable correlation-"

"What did you find, Rejel?" cut off Weyoun.

"Well, mostly just noise as they wandered the village and lab," she said, "but i found this one path that led far up into the mountains, and then just sort of, stopped."

"Stopped?"

"The android walked up to some ruins, and then never walked back. My first guess was that he transported back, but from the records I don't think the colony had the resources to beam anyone anywhere, and besides I'm getting some strange readings where it last stopped. Feignt, but strange."

This could be exactly what Weyoun was looking for, a lead, "Sounds interesting. Beam me, yourself, and 2 Jem'Hadar over their, giving a 10 meter birth." Within in a few minutes Weyoun shimmered next to Rejel and their guards, overlooking a few crumbled columns left by the aliens that once lived here thousands of years ago. The Federation colony had been studying their ruins, but up until now that hadn't seemed important. The colony was just where Soon had happened to set up shop.

They approached the ruins, an omnisensor in Rejel's hands. Her eyes stayed focused on her scanner as she followed the group, taking careful steps on the crumbled stone floor and gracefully weaving past the grey stone pillars. The columns formed three concentric circles, the outer ring nearly 80 meters across. The group naturally approached the center.

"What are you reading, Rejel?" asked Weyoun as they walked. Once started, she could go on for hours, but Weyoun had noticed she did not volunteer information. She was too wrapped up in her own world to care if the others knew what they needed.

"Some low intensity gamma rays, beta particles, and some subspace distortions with an unfamiliar pattern," she said. "They're all around us now, emanating from the ground under this structure. We'll probably have to excavate this site, see what's built under here."

In the center there was nothing, just an empty stone floor. Weyoun knelt down and wiped away some of the ash, and found markings carved into the stone. He motioned, and one of the Jem'Hadar bent down to help him. Together they uncovered an intricate symbol, a series of branching lines growing outward in a fractal pattern, with a smooth circle in the middle, almost cradled in its embrace. Weyoun stared intensly at it, lowering his head and looking to the left to see it from a smaller perspective, watching the lines twist away from him into the horizon of his short vision, and running his hands along the lines, feeling the edges of the engravings.

"This isn't right," he said softly. "This should have been worn away millennia ago."

Rejel pointed her scanner at the markings, the frowned. "I'm… not sure what to make of this. It's chemical composition is just simple stone, but the subspace readings are really strong here. I'm not sure if, i'm not sure if this part of the floor is entirely here."

"Like how a warp field puts a ship partway between space and subspace?" Weyoun tried.

Rejel shook her head. "It's more like, it's in two places at once rather than being between them. But where that other place is… doesn't have the properties of space or subspace."

Weyoun felt something give along one of the edges, and pressed down. A swirl of purple not-light suddenly engulfed him and he was gone.

"Weyoun!" shouted Rejel. The Jem'Hadar raised their weapons and began looking around, and Rejel began tapping on her scanner furiously, switching from its passive scan mode and using various active scans to try and figure out what happened.

"Gul Rejel," said the First over her com, "I cannot reach Weyoun. Do you know what happened?"

"Oh nothing," said Rejel, "he was just whisked away into another dimension."

The First paused a moment. "I'm sending down a team to help you retrieve him, assuming his still alive. We don't have much time, I have received news that demands immediate attention from the leaders of the Dominion."

Rejel straightened up and tried to speak with dignified command, but it came out sounding more hurt and pety, "That includes me soldier. Now what is this news?"

"Of course, Gul Rejel," admitted the First. "The Romulans have invaded Vulcan. The final war for the Alpha Quadrant has begun."

UUUUUUUUUUU


	7. Chapter 7: The Paths They Follow

Empires' End

Chapter 7: The Paths They Follow

Phaser fire could still be heard as Kira quietly entered from the smoke-filled hallway. It was a treasure room; full of artifacts and arcane technologies under study by Dominion scientists. They had pilfered Bajor's wonders just like the Cardassians, but at least they had kept them on planet, where she could still steal them back. The Dominion had no homeland to take their trophies back to. They were an administration, a spreading virus that sought to convert Bajor rather than suck them dry. But the effect was the same: Kira with a phaser in her hand, giving them hell until she'd killed enough oppressors to get them off her planet.

But this particular firefight wasn't just wanton destruction. She was looking for something, something very precious her resistance cell had learned was here. Kira's eyes scanned the room until she found the signature curved brown casing with jeweled sides, a shell crafted millennia ago to house the miraculous blinding hourglass of light within, an Tear of the Prophets. She approached it with a deliberate pace both appropriate to the immediacy of their situation, but still respectful for a hollowed artifact. Carefully, firmly, she hefted it off the table and stuffed it into a large carrying case she slung on her back, then returned to the firefight outside.

lllllll

Back in the caves, Kira and the others placed the Orb on a stable chunk of raised rock to serve as a makeshift shrine.

"I wish we had somewhere more worthy of it," said one of the young rebels.

"Better here than a Dominion lab," replied Kira, staring at the large glowing emeralds on its sides, drawing her to it. "Besides," she said, puzzled by the feeling. "I think we were meant to have it." Kira approached the Orb and carefully opened its hinged doors. The green light of the Orb of Prophecy and Change washed over her face, and offered her a vision.

Kira stood on the bridge of the Defiant, with the Emissary in front of her.

"This one is strong," said Sisko, but it wasn't Sisko. She knew it was a Prophet.

Suddenly she was in a temple, with Kai Opaka.

"And faithful," said the Prophet as Opaka, "She will serve us well."

"Y-Yes, I will follow whatever path you lay out for me," said Kira, awed, if a bit frightened by this communion. She had felt a Prophet inside her when she became a vessel for the Wreckoning, and she knew their words through scriptures and the confessions of the Emissary, but she had never spoken with them before. The Orbs offered much, but not direct communication. What task must they have for her to speak so openly?

"But can you?" said a Prophet in the visage of Dukat, as he reached out and grabbed her jaw. She resisted the urge to punch a god. "Even if it goes against every instinct you've forged in a lifetime of rage?"

Kai Winn stared judgingly down at her from a bridge in the monastery gardens, "This one is aggressive, adversarial."

But then Kai Opaka held her ear, closing her eyes as she felt her paw, "But she is strong. Strong enough to remake herself."

Sisko spoke to her from across his desk in his old office, "Strong enough to be a leader."

Kira spoke up, "I am a leader. I've commanded this cell in battle, I've organized it and kept it going."

Vedek Bareil knelt in prayer at the monastery, and turned to her, "Your path is not to lead Bajor's warriors. It is to lead their souls."

Kira smiled in a half giggle, then frowned and shook her head vigorously, "Oh no, no. I'm no monk. I'm a terrorist."

Sisko stood on the bridge of a shaking ship, fire and smoke erupting around them, "You are _righteous_. A quality suited to crusaders on the battlefield and the pulpit."

Dax sat with her in Quarks, and placed a reassuring hand on her arm, "You told me Kai Opaka kept your people resolved through the worst of the Cardassian Occupation. Do you really think Winn can do the same?"

Kira shook her head, "No, but can I?"

Opaka smiled at her, "Trust in the Prophets, and your path is clear."

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Dumar's head slammed back against the wall. It took a moment to remember that Sisko had punched him again. It was hard to concentrate through the pain. He'd suffered weeks of this, and kept expecting it to get easier.

It didn't.

But still Dumar held out. He was a Cardassian. And Cardassians don't break.

llllllll

Sisko was panting from exhaustion and anger. He was furious at Dumar, and furious at himself. Dumar started to slouch over, he was already too woozy to be much help today. Ben considered ending it early then. Leave for today and be anywhere but here. It was a good excuse- but that was all it was. For weeks he'd been at this, and he kept expecting it to get easier.

It did.

Sisko helped Dumar sit back up, and went in for another beating. As he once again rendered his prisoner into a bloody pulp, he saw his son, burnt to ash as he imagined in his nightmares. He saw Jennifer broken under a bulkhead. He saw his father, back on dead Earth asking where he'd left his mostly he just saw Garak, grinning smugly back at him through this cardassian's face, taunting him for all he let happen. _Not so principled now are we?_ he imagined him saying, _I guess the self-respect of a starfleet officer wasn't worth much after all_. Sisko screamed and thrashed the man over and over.

"Stop," whispered the prisoner through broken teeth. "Please... just... stop."

Relief washed over Sisko. This was the first words he'd gotten the cardassian to say. Perhaps this would not be in vain. If he could just get _something,_ on Dominion installations, fleet positions, secret cloning facilities, anything. Then maybe he could justify this barbarism as serving the greater good, like he had failed to do with the Romulans. Even without starfleet, perhaps he could still be a soldier. And being a soldier was much better than admitting he was just a violent man impotently raging over his dead family.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

The hooded family came to the house under the cover of night, as arranged. The people inside the house kept the lights off, but opened the door. Without entering the home herself, the mother crouched and held her eldest, then stood and, against every instinct she had, placed her baby into the arms of another, knowing she would never hold him again. The door closed, and the lone hooded figure departed into the night.

llllllll

After O'Brien had given in to his heroic impulses and joined the resistance, his family became an inevitable target and Keiko had gone into hiding. But with young children she could not survive off the grid, and it was impossible for them to hide within the grid together. Their only chance was to be someone else's children, someone not wanted dead by the Dominion. It was the hardest choice she had ever made, and she couldn't believe she'd had the strength to make it.

If only her husband had been that strong.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Bashir crept quickly through the dark cave rocks, escaping the electromagnetic field that shielded the colony from unwanted transporter beams. It had taken a bit of work to get here, but finally he was ready for his next mission. Once Bashir reached the extraction point, a shimmer of light brought him to the room of a ship- but not Sloan's stealth ship. By the shape of the bulkheads and the color of the panelled walls, it was a telorian freighter; a style of ship often favored by smugglers for its relatively faint warp signature despite its speed. Bashir thought through the possibilities as he turned around. It was extremely unlikely anyone else would know he was here, other than the Dominion, which would have beamed him somewhere very different. Maybe there had simply been a change in Sloan's plans…

"Garek!" Bashir shouted once he'd turned around and saw his old puzzlebox and mentor. His presence didn't really explain things, but it at least meant Bashir was safe- probably.

"I'm afraid Sloan is busy with other matters," said Garek. "But I was able to obtain the use of a Syndicate ship and pick you up myself. I must say you look rather dashing with Gul Usted's face, though I suspect you'll be wanting to change it out as soon as possible. There's equipment in the sickbay, such as it is. I would recommend a nice, thuggish looking andorian, purhapse with a few scars."

Bashir regarded Garek suspiciously, "So who are you working for, exactly?"

"Isn't it obvious?" replied Garek, "Section 31. And the Orion Syndicate. And a mining colony on Sappora Prime, but that's not important right now."

"I meant," said Bashir patently, "who do you really work for?"

Garek smiled, "I really work for all of them doctor. But if you're inquiring about my ultimate loyalties and motives, then I have to ask how you could know me all these years and still expect me to give an answer?"

"Alright, where's Sloan?"

"Off undermining some ketracel-white plant somewhere by assassinating the scientist tasked with fixing it. He'd infected their supply crop with some bioweapon a few months back, but they detected the resulting toxin in the drug and shut down the facility until they could root out the problem. Anyway that's why I'm here instead. Besides the next mission has us working together anyway. Just like old times, eh doctor?"

"Alright, what's the new mission?"

"We're going to take over the Orion Syndicate. I'm pretty far up their chain of command now, and with your help I think we can convert them into a new host for our shadowy organization, now that Starfleet is dead."

Bashir had expected they would go off plan when he heard about the Romulan attack, but the addition of Garek changed things completely. Bashir almost wondered how the man had found their little spy club, but then this sort of thing was right up Garek's alley, as were finding things. Honestly how had he not expected Garek to show up eventually?

"So, any news on O'Brien, Kira, or Odo?" asked Bashir as he followed Garek to sickbay. "I haven't seen them since I left."

"O'Brien is on some colony with his family last I checked, keeping his head down. Kira's in the resistance on Bajor. And Odo… was abducted while we were on Farius Prime looking for you. But he's almost certainly dead by now."

"Dead?" asked Bashir, shocked.

"Yes, he had caught some kind of wasting disease. I'm sorry."

"Oh god," said Bashir, as he realised what he'd done. "Sloan told me his bioweapon wouldn't infect Odo. I should have known it was a lie."

Garek stopped and turned on the spot. "You had something to do with this?" He hissed.

Bashir frowned, "I knew about it, when I joined Section 31 Sloan told me all the plans that were still in motion. The virus had already been released, but it would take some time for the Founders to die out."

"And you went along with genocide? I thought you were a doctor."

"Since when did you shun the hard choices? You wanted the Founders dead too. I didn't make the virus myself, but no, I didn't do anything to stop it once I found out. The Founders were the greatest threat we'd ever faced. They're very existence eroded trust and made free society impossible. Just a handful of changling operatives had destabilized this entire quadrant and turned longstanding allies to war. And they were utterly, irredeemably, evil. The Founders enslaved entire quadrants, forced their soldiers into drug addiction and so disregarded their lives in battle that few survived to the age of five."

"You want to talk to me about disrespecting life?" sneared Garek. "We spent months looking for you, after you abandoned us, because I knew if anyone could save him, it would be you. I felt like such a failure, when I didn't find you in time. Like I had let Odo die. And that whole time you _knew_ Odo was in danger? You didn't even try to help him? You didn't even consider that your friend might fall to this, this sweeping decision of yours?"

"I checked with Sloan that he'd be ok."

"And that was enough for you? Did you learn nothing about trusting him?"

"I didn't have time to verify it myself. I had bigger concerns."

"O yes, you and your little eugenics think tank had plans to make. You didn't have time to think about us little people while you decided our fates."

"So what if we did?! I tried leaving it up to you simple people, and look where it got me. My planet dead! My parents dead! So yes, I let the Founders die for what they did to them, and I didn't care about the consequences. Then I plotted the downfall of their empire, using _my talents_. All of them."

"All of them, _doctor_?" said Garek, quietly. "I remember some years ago, when I was dying from an abused neural implant, I used every tactic I could to disgust you. To get you to give up on me as morally worthless, so you would leave me alone. But you kept trying to save my life anyway. You had a talent for caring, for valuing your job as a healer above all else. Not deciding who lives and who dies."

"Well maybe I'm not a doctor anymore," said Bashir. "I'm more than that now."

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Gul Rejel sat in the war room. _Her _war room, at least for now. A Vorta administrator pointed at some maps detailing the Romulan fleets. "As you can see," he said. "We have to strike now, before they get Vulcan's shipyards running."

A legate seated across from Rejel countered, "A siege would take weeks now to get through their defences. By then the shipyards would be running anyway. Vulcan is a strategic planet, but it's not worth the resources necessary to take it with half the weight of the Romulan Empire defending it. You lost Vulcan, the best thing now is to not lose the war."

Rejel turned to the legate, "What do you propose?"

The cardassian smiled, "Like I said, the Romulans have half their fleet centered around Vulcan now. So why not take Romulus? It's still heavily defended, but less so then it will ever be again. Take Vulcan, and you've recovered from the original failure. Take Romulus, and that failure becomes a victory. Vulcan will fall soon enough without an empire to defend it, and then all the Alpha Quadrant will finally be part of the Dominion, and under Cardassian leadership."

Rejel nodded. She turned to the Vorta, "I approve. Let's begin plans for the immediate invasion of Romulus."

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Weyoun found himself kneeling on a stone floor much like he had left, after the swirling energies subsided. Standing up, he saw darkness all around him. The stone floor only extended a few meters in all directions, seven bare pillars marking the edges where the ground dropped off into the void. The ground was unmarked, by carvings nor the passage of time. Weyoun felt fear swirling in his stomach as he calmly examined his surroundings.

From out of the void immense forms took shape, fractal structures covering the sky and filling it with their not-light. They resembled the crystalline entity Weyoun had seen in Starfleet's records, and yet they were so much… more. As they moved, he could almost catch glimpses of their true shape, like the morphing shadows a rotating hypercube cast on three dimensional space. As Weyoun craned his neck to see these beings, thoughts appeared in his head.

_The vessel has returned._

_ No, this is a new one. Its structure is different. More complicated and yet, weaker. Messy. It is like the ones before. The one's that built the portal._

Weyoun had a guess at who they were referring to. "Excuse me?" he asked, with a diplomatic politeness he'd used equally on unimportant administrators and deadly alien kings. "Did an android visit and do business with you, about a decade or two ago?"

_The vessel is vibrating the matter we encased it in. Does this have a meaning?_

_ Yes. The others did that too. It is how they expressed agreement. The last vessel did this too, when it was not using light._

_ But we have not commanded it yet. To what is it agreeing?_

_The last vessel did this too, the first time it came._ We did not learn why.

_ Purhapse now we should? A closer examination is called for. Let us learn its mind._

Weyoun became nothing as he was instantaneously ripped apart atom by atom, then came into agonizing being again as he was reassembled, slowly. Once he was whole again, the thoughts returned, this time directed at him.

_You have power in your plane, of a kind._

_ You control ships and vessels and planets, in a way similar to but lesser than our control of structure and order._

_ Your plane is filled with food. Replicating patterns such as yourself concentrate order within yourselves as you consume extropy, creating convenient sources of high level structure for us to integrate and absorb._

_ You will help us harness it._

Weyoun shook his head. "Why would I help you destroy planets?"

_You will because we command it._

_There are many planets you have destroyed already. With ships and soldiers and weaker things. You may select the planets. Then help us absorb their structure._

_ You served false gods who claimed to spread order. Now help preserve order. Within us, the structure we absorb does not decay with the progression of thermodynamics. Entropy does not exist outside your dim plane. _

Existential pangs returned at the mention of his dead and disappointed gods. He stared up at these vast beings, and a sense of awe returned for the first in a long time. Perhaps he could make use of them in his war across the galaxy. And who knows, maybe he could find new purpose in their otherworldly demands. If anything deserved the title gods, it was beings such as these.

.


	8. Chapter 8: Ties That Bind

Empires' End

Chapter 8: Ties that Bind

Miles O'Brien looked over his shoulder after hearing a young man, Jeremy something, groan in frustration. The new recruit was trying to fix a broken phaser rifle, a stolen cardassian model with a jerry-rigged federation power cell duct taped to the side. O'Brien dropped his own work, walked over and crouched beside him. "Mind if I take a look at that soldier?"

Jeremy looked up, nodded, and gently handed it over. O'Brien spent a moment studying it, then handed it back. "Looks like a faulty ODN relay. You did a good job routing the power cell through the tripolymer circuitry, but the relay couldn't take the higher amplitude of the Federation current and burnt out."

The rebel looked away in shame. "So I broke it. I don't know when I'll get a replacement part while we're in these caves. And we're short on guns as it is. I'm just a liability now."

Miles put his hand on Jeremy's shoulder. "Don't worry, I've some experience with integrating Starfleet tech into Cardassian systems. Just bypass the relay and set the power cell to a three point eight charge cycle. That should do the relay's job well enough to get a coherent beam."

The farmhand turned soldier and field mechanic followed his advice and got a satisfying hum for his effort when he turned it on. He grinned. "Thanks. I guess that's why everyone around here calls you the chief. Like the head engineer on a starship."

O'Brien grunted and smiled, "Young man, I _was _the head engineer on a starship." He then went back to his work, leaving the earthbound man in quiet awe.

IIIIIIII

The raid was a failure. Bad recon, or maybe just bad luck. There were supposed to be fourteen soldiers stationed at this command post, with only three guards on duty during the night shift. O'Brien and the rebels would take them out, sneak in and hogtie the sleeping cardassians, and use the facility to beam them to the next warship scheduled for a layover in this system. When they got there, there were indeed just 3 guards outside. But once the rebels crept inside, instead of eleven sleeping officers they found over forty soldiers tucked inside playing dom-jot on a makeshift table. And even drunk off kanar, forty phaser blasts eventually hit their marks.

O'Brien ordered retreat immediately, then leapt beside a corridor and turned to lay down some cover fire while his troops ran. He tossed in a homemade smoke bomb and ran for the door himself, but a random shot got him in the shoulder and he fell to the floor. The last thing he saw was the but of a phaser rifle slamming into his face.

IIIIIIII

"Wake up!" yelled someone as a blinding light burst into O'Brien's face. Miles was restrained in a metal chair, facing a shadowy figure behind the floodlight.

Another figure came in to join the first. "So, this is the human captured in that little incident in Shantar Provence? Poor bastard walked right into a full garrison on their off hours."

"That's what I'm told," said the first voice gruffly. "Process him."

The second figure walked into the light, and O'Brien got a wozy impression of his face. The cardassian picked up something metal from the table and opened up O'Brien's jaw with it.

"That's funny," he said, "I think we've already processed him before. His back molar is already missing. Here," the interrogator swabbed the back of O'Brien's throat with a biosynth chip, then got up and handed it over to the administrator. "Run that DNA through our records. Let's see who our little would-be terrorist is." The administrator walked behind a nearby console and plugged in the chip, the interrogator followed him and leaned over his shoulder to see the results.

The first cardassian spoke up once he'd read enough. "Miles Edward O'Brien. Former soldier in the Federation's military. You killed quite a lot of us in the war. I guess you couldn't help trying to kill some more." He turned to the interrogator, "Get what you can out of him. The rebels are hardly a threat, but it's as good an excuse as any to get some payback." He looked into O'Brien's eyes, "I suspect he'll let you inflict a lot of pain before he gives in."

IIIIIIIII

O'Brien crawled into the corner of his cell, grateful just to be somewhere he knew was safe from the shocks. The faint buzz of the forcefield snapping on and the retreating footsteps told him the cardassian who had thrown him back in here was gone. O'Brien rested for a few sweet moments, then got back to work. He crept to a panel on the wall he had already broken and pried it loose again. Out of the crevice he pulled the tool he had been building out of the simple wiring within the walls. After a few hours of tinkering, he realized today was the day: it was nearly finished. An hour later and his device was ready, but was he?

O'Brien knew he would only get one shot at this, and would need his strength, such as he could muster here. He didn't want to spend another second in this hell, but life had beaten patience into him long ago. Miles finished and returned the tool, replaced the panel, and drifted off to sleep.

The morning greeted him with shouts and a bowl of gruel haphazardly slid across the floor, like usual. O'Brien leaned over to take it, sat up, and tipped the bowl so gravity slowly slid the grey slop into his open mouth. Prisoners didn't merit spoons. Finished, he looked into his captor's eyes with grim determination, waiting for the next part of the day.

"I wonder if you'll talk today?" pondered the interrogator. He looked to the guards to ready their phasors and turned off the forcefield again. "You're dead the moment you do, of course. We've no reason to keep you around past your usefulness. But then, is this really worth continuing? Day after day of shocks and beatings? I suppose I'd cling to life too, but at some point dignity has to be satisfied." He motioned with his hand and O'Brien walked out of his cell. "At some point you'll have to let this end."

The interrogator then looke to two of the guards and they grabbed and pinned O'Brien to the wall. O'Brien tensed himself at this unexpected turn. Normally he was taken straight to the torture room.

"I'm curious what keeps you going," said the interrogator, as he walked into O'Brien's cell. "Is it some stubborn refusal to give up, some perverted need to go on living even when life gives you nothing…or"- Fear stabbed O'Brien as the cardassian leaned beside his hiding panel, and cooled into icy despair as he opened the panel and found his patchwork tool- "is it simply the delusion that the longer you hold on, the more likely you can escape." The cardassian looked over the tool for a moment, admiring it's ingenuity, and then casually broke it in two.

"I watched you build this, you know," the man said as he left the cell and approached O'Brien. "Every night as you huddled over your broken wires, thinking you were alone. Did you really think there were no cameras recording you? Or that no one was watching them? Could you really be so uncomprehending of your predicament? You are my prisoner, Miles. Nothing can change that." The interrogator looked at the broken pieces and sighed. "Still I have to give you some credit," he said, charitably. "It's a masterful work of craftsmanship, really. Not many men can pull apart a power conduit and in its place make a forcefield disrupter, let alone one that doubles as a primitive laser. Of course you realize it could only have gotten a few shots off before overloading."

"That was the idea," muttered O'Brien. "Would've blown down the outer wall after shooting a guard or two on my way there."

The interrogator's eyes lit up, "So it triples as a bomb precisely because of its limitations. Fascinating." He then called to his men and at least seven soldiers marched out of the main corridor into the crowded cell room. "But tell me," he said, "how would one man who can barely walk fight his way past a garrison of guards with a gun that only shoots twice?"

"Wasn't counting on that much security," muttered O'Brien. He looked up, "Do you lot really have nothing better to do than watch prisoners while they sleep and send ten soldiers to guard one man?"

The cardassian smiled, "I'm very devoted to my subjects. And the excess troops were just for last night, when I knew you'd be trying your escape now that your toy was finished. Only you never came out." He leaned in close and looked deep into Mile's eyes, "Could it be that deep down you understood the futility of the gesture? That no matter what gismo your fevered mind cobbled together, nothing could save you from your fate?"

The interrogator motioned and the guards pinning him started dragging him off toward the torture chamber. "You have only choice left to you human," the cardassian said as he led the way, "when to finally die."

IIIIIII

O'Brien sat alone in his cell. In his hands was another tool, scraped together from the insides of the same broken panel. His captors hadn't even bothered to fix it. They knew it didn't matter. This tool was much less fancy than before, just a shard of glass with a sharp edge. Not much use in a fight, it was too small to be a knife. But it would let him escape, in a sense. He had only one choice left, like the cardassian said, but he would be damned if he would sell out his friends in the resistance. He wouldn't die by giving them what they wanted, but he couldn't go on anymore. Not if there was no hope of escape. It wasn't a matter of being strong enough, there was simply no reason to continue an existence that consisted solely of torture. It wasn't the first time he'd made this decision, but perhaps it was the only time the decision was sane.

He would never see Molly or Keiko again, or little Kirayoshi. He had abandoned them when he left for war, again. He never could stop himself from being a soldier, no matter how much he played the engineer. Well, soldiers died.

Miles closed his eyes, steadied the glass over his wrists, and sang softly, "The minstrel boy to the war is gone, in the ranks of death you will find him…"

But midway through his song the sound of explosions shook through the walls. O'Brien stilled his blade and quit his song. After another unseen bombardment the lights went out, and in their place came the brilliant blue shimmer of a transporter beam. O'Brien found himself on the transporter pad of a cardassian ship, staring at the farm boy from the resistance, now manning his old station.

O'Brien was too overwhelmed to speak. He wiped the tears from his eyes as the young man came over and helped him to his feet. "Jeremy," O'Brien finally whispered as he leaned on the rebel's shoulders, unable to find the words to thank him, or express the profound hope rising in his chest after an unspeakable night.

The soldier grinned and said simply, "You didn't think we'd leave our Chief behind, did yah?"

UUUUUUUU

Rejal strode into a crowded mess hall with the fate of worlds on her mind. The Dominion fleet had just left for the invasion of Romulus, and it would be several days before they would engage the enemy. Meanwhile she had just finished watching the fall of Andoria as the Romulans used their new position on Vulcan to seize nearby star systems- a grim reminder that every decision had a cost. By directing their attention to Romulus, they had allowed them the opportunity to breach their blockade of Vulcan and spread further into Dominion territory. But hopefully it wasn't territory they would have for long. A swift invasion of the enemy's vulnerable homeworld should quickly finish this afterthought of a war, with the last remnant of the Alpha Quadrant. But nothing in the future was certain, and in the present they had lost 2 worlds- and she still didn't understand what had so empowered the Romulan fleet. Their numbers and maneuverability far outstretched original estimates. Rejal worried that there might be further surprises waiting for them.

Like a Vorta with a mountain of bizarre food covering her table. Never able to resist her curiosity, Rejal approached the Vorta's table and greeted her, "Hi, I'm Rejal, the new leader of Cardassia, you're one of the new Vorta identities right? I didn't think I would get a chance to speak with any of you, since I thought all of you had been assigned administration positions out along the new territories..."

The Vorta quickly swallowed a piece of fruit she had been sampling and nodded vigorously. "Silani One, at your service. Um, yeah pretty much of all of us had, but my assignment was on Vulcan so…" She shrugged helplessly, then startled and offered Rejal a chair.

Rejal took it absentmindedly and sat down. "I hadn't thought about that. The new Vorta on Andoria are probably in for a shaky first day on the job too. So were you on Vulcan at the time or-"

"I was on a ship headed there. Didn't get very far before the news broke, and we just came back to Cardassia to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet. I beamed down here and have kind of just been dead weight until they can find a new job for me." Silani looked down at all the food on her table and quickly added. "Not that i've just been sitting here wasting all you replicator power for the past few weeks. This is just an... experiment."

"Yes I was wondering about that," said Rejal as she spotted a plait of terran lasagna and reached for it. She looked questioningly at Silani, who nodded that she could have it. "Most of this stuff isn't even programmed into the mess's replicators. Also I thought Vorta had an impoverished palate."

"Yes well I looked through some databases and added a few dishes from across the quadrant. I needed a more diverse sample set then just Cardassian fair."

"So what were you testing?" asked Rejal impatiently.

"Well I," Silani looked around conspiratorially, then leaned in to Rejal and stuck her tongue out. When Rejal only showed confusion, Silani explained. "I grafted Kressari taste buds onto my tongue, that's why it looks kind of greenish along the top now. I was trying to improve my sense of taste."

"Did it work?" asked Rejal, intrigued.

"Well, yes and no," said Silani. "It definitely increased the range of senses, but the Founder's genetic tampering didn't just cover our physiology, our neural wiring was reworked as well. My brain just isn't built to process these stimuli, so I had to adapt other areas of my brain to interpret flavor, as kind of their part time job." Silani picked up a boiled cardassian Tasper egg and spooned a bite into her mouth, frowned a bit while mulling over the sensations, then swallowed it. "For example," she said, "that tasted like a dark yellowish green." She looked down at the rotten egg again, "Despite really looking more brownish grey. Why do you like these again?"

Rejal smiled, "We don't, really. I'm quite certain half of cardassia are masochists."

Silani laughed at that, then frowned and looked serious, "Still, I wouldn't judge your people so harshly. There's depth, and history in your culture. The vorta don't even have a culture. We're just, cogs."

Rejal shook her head, "Now that can't really be true. Every people has a culture-"

"But we're not a people," Silani cut in, "just a collection of separated individuals. Since I've been activated I've physically spoken to another vorta less than 50 times, and in each case it was purely business, not much more than the sterile updates I read every day. Even the Jem'hadar spend time together in their barracks, trading stories of valiant Firsts that achieved narrow victories or lived past 5, but on every ship there's just one vorta, alone. The only thing binding us together is devotion to the Founders."

"Well," pondered Rejal as she grabbed a Bajoran tart for the road and stood up, "maybe you should change that. Apparently there are going to be several vorta stuck here for the remainder of this war. Maybe you should seek them out."

"I might at that," said Silani. She picked up a single serpent worm from a bowl of gagh and cautiously nibbled it's lifeless replicated corpse, then made a face, "At the very least it would go better than my dabbles in culinary neurology." Without getting up, she leaned upward and shook Rejal's hand, "It was very pleasant speaking with you, Rejal. I hope to do so again sometime."

Rejal walked back to the war room, munching on her tart, and wondered if she'd just made a friend- and whether befriending that strange vorta could result in anything but trouble.

UUUUUUUUU

Picard had been in this cell for hours, after Romulan security had caught him trying to sneak aboard a freighter. He had a few ideas how to escape, but he decided the prudent thing for now was to wait, let them show their hand first. There were numerous ways Picard could be of use to his captors, so the question was, what did they want from him, and could he exploit that?

"Captain Picard," said a Romulan as he strolled in front of his cell.

"Praetor Vreenak," said Picard once he recognized him. Though he did not recognize the unmasked hatred in his eyes. This would be an uphill battle.

Vreenak smiled, "It's good to see your keeping up with local politics. It would have been distressing to learn someone ignorant had been so recklessly meddling with them."

"Oh I'm keenly aware of the situation Praetor," said Picard. "Enough to be puzzled by my imprisonment. It seems to me that I should have been allowed to leave."

Vreenak raised an eyebrow, and his voice, "You _assassinated _a Romulan Senator, conspired to bring war down upon us, then tried to sneak aboard one of _our _ships, and you think I should just _let you go_?"

Picard gave him a hard look, "Vreenak, like it or not you are at war with the most powerful force in the alpha quadrant. A force whose armies surround you on all sides. If I were you I would be thinking very hard right now about finding allies."

Vreenak sneared, "And what is a broken old man without his fleet or his ship supposed to do for me?"

"The very thing I was on my way to do, before you arrested me: ignite a rebellion within the Federation," said Picard, launching into a speech. "If I can distract the Dominion's occupation forces with an armed uprising, they'll be in a much less imposing position as they face down your armies. Pairing your fleets with a ground rebellion was, after all, how you captured Vulcan. And it's the only way you'll avoid spending soldiers on the ground. What was it you were trying to achieve Preator? A costless war?"

Vreenak chuckled, "Very convincing, old man. Almost enough for me to forget you're the reason I'm _in_ this war so early. But you don't get to pull the same trick twice. An armed rebellion in the _former _Federation worlds is exactly what I'm aiming for, but I don't need _you_ to help me get it. They're fighting all on their own. All they needed was to see the rise of Vulcan, and now every planet from Mars to Betazed is in a full scale riot. And as we speak Kressari intermediaries are smuggling our weapons into their hands." He smiled coldly, "You're people do make excellent cannon fodder.

"Now," continued Vreenak, "I suppose you could probably help them organize better. You're one of the last few members of starfleet left alive, you've experience with command and tactics, and I'm sure you have many connections left within the former Federation." He dragged his next words reluctantly through a pit of bile, "And let it never be said that I waste potential assets. Even if that asset killed someone very dear to my heart."

It took a moment to understand, but once he did, Picard wished that moment had lasted longer. Picard looked away, realizing fully what he had done. That the man he had chosen to kill was a person, with people who cared about him. Not just some chess piece on a board. How could he have forgotten that? Picard looked up, "You and Mayvar were together? I'm so sorry. I can't begin…"

Vreenak looked sick, "save your groveling. The last thing I need is the sympathies of a killer. And it's certainly not why I'm here. I would have had you thrown you into some dark hole for the rest of your life without even looking at you first, if I didn't want to waste an asset."

"So you will let me join the rebellion," said Picard.

"No," Vreenak decreed, "I have a different use for you."

Vreenak walked away for a moment and came back with a chair. Slowly, he set it down and sat down comfortably. Then he looked back at the wayward captain, "Are you aware that we recently acquired Andoria?"

Picard nodded.

"I'm afraid it wasn't quite taken without cost, several ground troops were killed in the incursion. But it was necessary for the war effort to take it now, instead of wait for more organized rebellion and my... other plans for dealing with ground forces. Vulcan's shipyards are already being refitted to produce our positronic ships. But Vulcan's resources are insufficient on their own to maintain the needed production levels. We need Andoria's mines to provide the necessary minerals and dilithium. Unfortunately, the Andorian minors have been decidedly less than cooperative. They sabotaged the equipment during the rebellion, and they've been refusing to work, even under threat of imprisonment. I could start using more extreme measures to convince them to work, but I'm hoping you can provide a better option."

"Me?" asked Picard, wary of where this was going.

"You're an accomplished diplomat after all," said Vreenak, condescendingly. "And something of a celebrity in the former Federation. Savior from the Borg and all that. You could lend a certain legitimacy to our forces. Convince the people that our best interests are their best interests."

"You want me to spew Romulan propaganda?" said Picard.

"I want you to tell the truth," said Vreenak. "The more ships we can turn out, the more worlds we can free from the Dominion."

"Occupation under Romulan guard is hardly the same as being as free," countered Picard.

Vreenak shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps," he said. "But the longer we are at war with the Dominion, the greater your chance to throw us both off your shoulders." He smiled at the irony of it, "You have to help us, no matter how much you despise us, simply because doing so gives you the greatest chance to betray us later. Even if the chance of victory is impossibly slim," he sneared, "it's all you have left."

Picard didn't have anything to say to that. It was the same logic he had used on Spock, the same sacrifices he had demanded of the Vulcan people. He couldn't refuse it for himself. But this made him sicker than assassination plots. This was the last inch of him, the last thread of self respect. To do this was to be among the mosted hated dregs humanity had ever sunk to. To do this was to be a collaborator.

UUUUUUUUUUU

News had spread across Bajor that an Orb had been liberated. Secretly, it traveled from province to province, carried by the right hand of the Emissary, a hero of the resistance twice over. With skills she had learned in the underground, she kept the artifact safe from Dominion hands, even as they sent waves of troops to recover it. The Keeper of the Orb offered its wisdom to all those she could reach, and to the rest offered hope through her growing legend. Rumors even began that the Prophets had granted her divine power, and that through her they healed the sick and injured. Most likely these were exaggerations from tails of her sharing raided medical supplies, but the story stuck. Wherever the Keeper walked the blessings of the Prophets followed, and soon all of Bajor was singing Kira's name as a rallying cry of rebellion.

UUUUUUUUUUU

Sisko stood on the bridge of the Defiant as 4 Maquis ships rendezvoused for their next raid. Dumar had finally broken and now they knew the location of a key Jem'Hadar cloning facility, on a small planet in the Denorous Belt. The 4 ships - all refitted frigates and science vessels never meant to be armed- would provoke the Dominion ships and then draw them away from the planet, while the cloaked Defiant went in for the kill. They were only 4 hours out from the planet and had several last minute details to work out (the vulcan science vessel's cardassian phaser cannon had suddenly stopped accepting federation power flow, and now they had to rework the offensive formation to disguise the fact that one of the four ships wasn't armed), but Sisko needed to settle other business first. Something he should have done months ago.

"On screen," said Sisko after an anxious breath. The Maquis at ops tapped a panel, and Kasidy's face appeared on the viewer, standing on the bridge of her freighter.

"Hello Ben," she said as they looked into each other for the first time in over a year. Sisko had heard she'd survived after the war. Had even planned missions that involved her once she rejoined his revived Maquis. But in all those scrappy dogfights their ships never crossed paths. Perhaps that was on purpose. Perhaps they kept their distance because they were afraid. Afraid they were too weak to be there for eachother now, when they needed them. Ben had lost his family, his son. Kasidy was just as diminished when the Dominion scorched Earth. He feared their pain would just compound each other... or maybe he just didn't want her to see him like this.

It was all there in his eyes, the things he had done. The dead, desperate rage barely masked on his face told the story as clearly as if he'd dragged the tortured man up to the bridge and showed off all the scars he'd given him. The quiver on his lip betrayed he was on the verge of tears just from the presence of someone from his old life. The sag of his shoulders revealed the weight of guilt from the decision that had doomed them all. He was too broken to hide any of it, exposed and naked before her like a soul before God.

Kasidy shook back tears at the wounded sight and then stared at him straight and said truly, "It's good to see you again."

And a smile crept on their faces and things grew a little lighter.


	9. Chapter 9: Unconscionable Acts

Empires' End

Chapter 9: Unconscionable Acts

The bridge rocked as the Defiant absorbed another barrage of dominion weaponry, but true to its name, the ship refused to succumb under their firepower.

"Shields at 30 percent," the Maquis tactical officer, Delanna, informed Sisko. The hit had taken 24 percent of their shield power, but there hadn't been a way to get within a firing arc of this fighter without taking a few bruises from it.

"Got 'em," shouted Delanna a moment later, somewhat unnecessarily as the dominion ship exploded on screen.

"Now just another six to go," quipped Moraine, the helmsmen.

"We've just lost the Morocco," said Jel, the officer at ops.

"Damn," said Sisko. The Morocco had a good crew. And they weren't supposed to lose anyone this battle. They just couldn't afford to these days. But the cloning facility at the Denorous Belt had been a little better armed than Dumar had last heard. Understandable, since it had been several months since his capture. Sisko really should have anticipated the possibility that his intel was out of date. Sisko's fault, again. Damn.

"Turn 34 by 6J," Sisko ordered, "we'll have to replace the Morocco's cover at Kasidy's right flank."

Another Jem'Hadar fighter came within a firing arc as the Defiant flew into position. Delanna at tactical made short work of them, but not before the fighter had blasted away the Xhosa's grafted cannons and exhausted their shields. Kasidy was a sitting duck.

Between the Xhosa's damage, the Morocco, and the engineering issues with the T'Vran, the Maquis now only had two ships with working guns, against five Jem'Hadar fighters.

But one of those ships was the Defiant.

IIIIIIIII

Two ships to go. But now the shields were down to five percent, the phasor banks were nearly exhausted, and the Traslo had used the last of its torpedoes- its only weaponry.

"We could ram them," suggested Delanna.

"Like hell we could," said Moraine.

"Actually our ablative hull armor might be able to take it," said Jel at ops. "Provided we hit them at the right angle."

"If we fire the last of our phasors at the Jem'Hadar hull right as we collide," Delanna speculated, "the added heat might soften the blow for our penetration. Like warming butter before you slice it."

"Oh god this is starting to sound like a feasible plan," said the helmsmen. He sighed, "I'm calculating the trajectory now."

"No one is ramming anyone," said Sisko. Now was exactly the time for a crazy plan, but he knew this one wouldn't work. He'd had simulations of just such a maneuver done back at Utopia Planetia when he'd headed the Defiant's design. He knew her limits. And this was one of them. Still, maybe after they'd somehow taken down one more ship, they could ram the last one. This mission might be worth their lives, and the other Maquis ships were carrying enough charges to destroy the cloning facility even without guns, once the fighters were out of the way... Wait.

"Put Kasidy onscreen," Sisko ordered. The charges couldn't penetrate a fighter's shields, but both the Defiant and the Xhosa had enough to blast through Dominion hull armor. If they rammed through the shields with their ships, flying just close enough to graze the fighter's hull, they could deposit the charges inside their shields, and detonate them from in there. Kasidy's ship would have to go first, since her ship was slower than the Jem'Hadar. If Sisko corralled one towards her, a Dominion fighter might allow the Xhosa to ram them, knowing a collision would destroy the cargo freighter but leave the warship unharmed. A ramming attack was exactly the kind of desperate ploy ships pulled when they were out of firepower, so the Jem'Hadar might not expect a trap. But once they knew, it would be up to the Defiant to run down and plant the last ship. Otherwise the Jem'Hadar would be happy to keep back and fire with their still quite full complement of weapons until the Maquis ships were eventually destroyed.

"We can do this Benjamin," said Kasidy after he'd quickly run through the scheme. "But you know it wouldn't take more than a small twitch in ours or the Jem'Hadar's flight path to cause a collision. And then this really would be just another 'let's ram them' plan."

"I know," said Sisko. He looked her in the eyes, and left the rest unsaid.

Kasidy turned off the connection, and the Xhosa flew towards its position.

"Another ship just dropped out of warp," said Jel at ops, "cardassian." Sisko tightened his fist. They couldn't take another setback like this. "Sorry I didn't catch its approach captain," added Jel, "too much interference." Well that _is_ why they had waited for the Denorous Belt to pass through an ion cloud. No sensors in here could detect anything past half a lightyear out. The perfect cover for their assault. Too bad it cut both ways.

Sisko slammed his fist down against his armrest console. "Put Kasidy and the others on the com, it's time to retreat, if we can."

"Captain," said Jel, "the cardassian ship is firing on the Jem'Hadar."

"What?" said Sisko.

"They're hailing all Maquis ships." Jel read their message. "They'd like us to engage a Maxwell 4 with them at gunner."

"By all means," said Sisko. Moraine turned their ship to fly into formation. A Maxwell 4... Sisko guessed they'd learned it from the Federation-Cardassian border wars. The cardassians probably assumed the Maquis didn't have an accurate copy of standard cardassian maneuvers, and figured that since a starfleet vessel was with the Maquis, they should pick something out of starfleet's book to ensure everyone would know what to do. It was a typical cardassian decision: extremely effective, yet somewhat condescending. But why was this ship helping them?

The Maquis ships with working shields flew to intercept enemy fire as the cardassian warship engaged the two Dominion fighters. Maxwell had designed it to ring the last bit of tactical utility out of a ship even when its weapons were exhausted. Between that, and the new ship being fresh for the fight, the Jem'Hadar didn't really stand a chance.

Once the last fighter was destroyed, the cardassian vessel finally opened a visual to the Defiant, now that they could talk in peace.

"Hello captain," said O'Brien. "Sorry I'm a bit late."

"Chief!" yelled Sisko happily. Things were starting to make more sense. Sort of. "I'm glad to see you. I thought you were riding out the occupation with your family."

Mile's face grew grim. "I uh, couldn't keep myself away. Always was too much of a soldier... But they're safe. I think. I trust Keiko to have kept our children hidden."

"I'm sure she did," said Sisko, hoping they were right. "So how'd you get the ship?"

"Oh you know," said O'Brien, turning towards his crew, "the usual ways."

IIIIIIIIIIIIII

The cloning facility was now defenseless, though there were likely several Jem'Hadar guards inside. The complex, built into an iridium laced asteroid, was difficult to beam within. Transporting into rooms near the surface was possible with a little skill, but deeper penetration was impossible. The plan was to beam in with the charges on carts, and walk them into the center of the facility, where a detonation would properly destroy the asteroid.

Of course Sisko had no intention of having another costly firefight with the Jem'Hadar. "Are the gamma pulsers ready for transport?" he called down to the transporter room.

"Ay captain," they answered back.

"Then beam them over and detonate them." The barrel sized devices were designed to produce gigajoules of pure gamma radiation in a short burst. The rays would reach deep into facility, fatally damaging all living tissue, as well as complex machinery. But the rays would leave behind no radioactive material. All ionized particles would decay within a matter of seconds. The Maquis would have to wait a few minutes for the Jem'Hadar to become fully incapacitated, but then it would be completely safe to beam aboard themselves. Needless to say such devices had been declared a war crime by the Federation. Too bad for the Dominion that they had eliminated that particular legal obstacle.

Sisko, Jel, Kasidy, a member of Kasidy's crew, and O'Brien beamed down along with two carts. Each cart carried three antimatter charges, some tools, and a floodlight to illuminate the dead facility. Sisko looked around. The room was large enough that the floodlights didn't quite reach the walls, and empty except for the spent pulsers behind them. He assumed the room was intended for receiving cargo, since it was in the easiest location to transport to within the asteroid. In front of them was a large door with a panel to the side. The door was shut and the panel looked fried. Sisko looked to O'Brien, and he dutifully headed to the panel. Still the Chief.

Frowning into his cardassian scanner, O'Brien said, "I don't think I can get this to open anything ever again. And we can't use the manual without a Dominion hardkey. These doors are designed to lock in the event of a catastrophic shutdown. We'll have to blast the door." He went to one of the carts and looked through what they'd brought, selecting a starfleet phaser. Setting the phaser to maximum, he aimed at the door and disintegrated it. Turning back to the others with a grin, he said, "I missed these."

They made their way through the corridors towards the center of the complex. It wasn't long before they came across their first Jem'Hadar. He lay facedown on the floor, breathing heavily and covered in radiation burns. Kasidy shot him without hesitating. Not because the dying soldier was a threat, Sisko suspected, but because it was the least they could do. Technically mercy killings were also a war crime in the old days, mostly to deny soldiers a potential excuse to kill incapacitated enemies they didn't like. But here it was definitely appropriate. He pulled out his phaser.

Ten minutes later, halfway to the core, the party came to a large window along the corridor wall, beside another door. The room behind the window was also cavernously large, but far from empty. Inside were a variety of stationary targets, statues in the shape of humans, romulans, and klingons. There were also a variety of obstacles and sources of cover, such as fake rocks and several benches. Then of course there were the children.

At least fifty of them, all sprawled along the floor or collapsed over rocks mid-climb. The soundproof window spared the party from the moaning and gasping breaths, but their imaginations filled in the silence anyway. Sisko hadn't expected there to be children here, but then it did make a certain sense. Why would the Dominion clone and train their soldiers in separate facilities? After all, Jem'Hadar grew to adulthood in a matter of days, and didn't require anything excessively elaborate in their upbringing, like a planet or a family. No, a few more training rooms like this one, some terminals with approved data, and some _white_, and they were good. So what if the children never saw a tree or the sky until they were on the battlefield? What mattered was growing soldiers as efficiently as possible. So it was all done right here. Complete vertical integration of troop production. So if this cloning facility had a regular output of several hundred soldiers, he'd just murdered several hundred children with radiation poisoning. He looked at the little Jem'Hadar, many of them still clutching their training rifles as if it was their life's blood. They'd have been adults in few days anyway, fully fledged enemy combatants. Did it really matter that he'd killed them a little early?

It did, it really, really did.

Sisko disintegrated the door with his phaser, set the phaser back from maximum to kill, and systematically shot each kid in the room. The others solemnly joined in. When it was done, Sisko grabbed hold of the cart and returned to pushing. "Come on," he said, "the sooner we set these off, the sooner the children in the rest of this complex won't be suffering anymore."

They ran the rest of the way.

UUUUUUUUUUUU

Picard sat at the head of a conference table. The entire room was sculpted from solid jade, made by Andorian artisans millennia ago, as part of some dictator's palace long before it became the capital of the world-spanning democracy that had joined the Federation. Now it was home to dictators once more. The Romulan governor was not in the room with him, but Picard's position at the head of the table was enough to show that he represented her. Before him sat seven Andorians, former politicians, businessmen, union leaders, and resistance fighters he'd had pulled from the mines. He knew four of them personally, the rest by reputation. If anyone on the planet had the clout to speak for the Andorian people, it was them. If he could strike a deal with them, the other workers would go along with them.

Every one of the leaders' eyes burned with betrayal. This was going to be difficult.

"I have been given leave to offer several boons," started Picard, "if your people would increase cooperation with the mining supervisors. On the table are increased rations, sick leave-"

"We're not going to help the romulan war machine just because they agree to stop starving us and working our sick and injured to death," said Ra'Check, the former owner of the western continent's keltop fields, who once supplied the Enterprise with emergency grains to aid a failing colony world. "Our farms were running at post-scarcity production levels. You're only rationing the food as a means of control."

"I don't know what you expect from us," said Je'Tal, who'd run the doctor's union, and had once settled a dispute that may have closed several orbital hospitals for the first time in a hundred years, if not for her, "But we are not going to sell this occupation to the masses for you. _We_ at least aren't collaborators."

Picard looked at both of them gravely, and tried to convey compassion. "I'm afraid the rations exist because the farms dropped in productivity when the Romulans diverted most of their workforce towards the mines. Now, I'm confident I can get the Romulans to return those workers to the fields, _if_ I can guarantee that they'll see an equivalent increase in productivity from the remaining miners. And for that I'll need your help."

"So it's work harder or starve to death from mismanaged resources," replied Ra'Check. "That's not an offer. That's a threat."

"Why are you working with these people Jean-Luc?" asked Me'Vak, the former Prime Minister of Andoria, and before that an accomplished diplomat who Picard had once ferried across a minefield to arbitrate a peace agreement. "You're no mouthpiece."

"Because we need them," said Picard. He turned to Je'Tal, who, according to the Tal Shiar, had joined the resistance during the Dominion occupation, "How was your resistance under the Dominion? Did you have any hope of success?"

"It's not like the Romulans are any better," she replied.

"No," agreed Picard, "But they are another force to play against the Dominion. A force with warships, unlike our defeated Federation. Warships these mines are supplying the materials for."

"So that's what you're doing?" asked Me'Vak. "Playing the Romulans and Dominion off each other. Are you sure it's not the Romulans who are playing you?"

Picard smiled wearily. "Can't it be both?" he asked.

"No," cut in Ra'Check. "It really can't." He got up to leave. "Now if you excuse me," he said, quickly glancing at Je'Tal, "I have more important things to take care of." The other andorians got up to follow him. On her way out, Me'Vak gave Picard a concerned look.

Alone in the conference hall, Picard pondered his failure. He hadn't expected much to be accomplished in the first meeting, but he had expected it to last more than ten minutes. They'd only made a token gesture of listening, probably because they'd had no intention of dealing with a collaborator.

Or maybe... because some of them were in a hurry. There had been no irony in Ra'Check's voice when he said he'd had more important things to do today. He truly meant it. Picard doubted he'd been talking about mining then. He'd glanced at Je'Tal before leaving. Picard pulled up their records. They worked in separate processing facilities, but had been spotted together multiple times within the capitol. An affair? No, Je'Tal's spouse was female, and her intelligence report listed her orientation as homosexual and homoromantic. An affair with Ra'Check was highly unlikely. The Tal Shiar was convinced she'd ceased participating in the resistance in the months following the Romulan takeover, but the Tal Shiar had seen better days. And why would she stop just because of a change in leadership? So assuming she was still fighting, and that Ra'Chek had been meeting with her because they worked in the rebellion together, then it seemed likely they had something planned for tonight. Something they needed to get back to, but couldn't raise suspicion over by refusing Picard's invitation to a meeting.

But then why risk leaving so abruptly? Something very time sensitive then. He scanned his records of the day's plans. There was a large shipment outbound for Vulcan today. A carrier ship would be landing at the Velnon docking fields in a few hours. Picard checked the train records: both Je'Tal and Ra'Check had just boarded trains that would carry them from the capitol to their respective processing facilities, _but_ would first make stopovers in Velnon.

Picard stopped himself, his hypothesis was dancing on smoke at this point. He should at least check if … Hmm, for reaching Ra'Check's workplace, his train choice actually looked like the optimum route, but for Je'Tal, it would have been much quicker to board a different train. Still so much conjecture, but Picard had to admit his hunch was starting to reach a level of likelihood where he should at least make some low cost move to prevent it, if possible.

That is, assuming he actually wanted to prevent it.

Vulcan's shipyards needed the material in this shipment. He _had_ to ensure that Romulus stayed in the fight against the Dominion, at least for now. And then there was the chance that the rebels' sabotage would be a bomb. A lot of lives could be lost if that was the case… No, now he was just rationalizing. He had no idea what the rebels had planned. But still, either way, it went against _his _plans. He'd have to put a stop to it.

But that didn't mean throwing Je'Tal and Ra'Check under the bus. He sent an order to the Romulan police in Velnon, had them intercept the andorians at the train station and bring them in for questioning. He said he suspected them of smuggling food. They'd only get a slap on the wrist for that. Assuming they played it cool, and didn't have anything incriminating with them. And that was unlikely, since they hadn't had anything when they went through the palace scanners, and they hadn't had the time to go anywhere from here but straight to the train station. They would probably be alright.

At least, that's what Picard told himself.

UUUUUUUUUUU

Garak stood in a bright room covered in black market medical equipment. Next to him sat Bashir in his Andorian guise, staring into a desk terminal. In the center of the room lay a stasis pod, with a dead vorta inside.

With the resources of the Syndicate under their influence, Garak and Bashir had learned many things about the two empires now clashing. One pattern in particular had earned their interest, an irregularity in shipping and assignments within the Dominion that suggested a massive construction project. The Dominion were apparently working on a new secret weapon, but they had no idea what it was. They had, however, determined which scientists were working on it, and tracked one down. They'd then sent a Syndicate cell to capture him, but the mission had been botched. The vorta was allowed a chance to activate his suicide implant before being incapacitated. Luckily, the operatives involved had had the good sense to shove the dead vorta into a stasis pod when they got him back to their ship.

So now Garak and Bashir had to figure out how to get something useful from a perfectly preserved corpse.

"The neural pathways are still mostly intact," said Bashir, as he studied his scans. "The tissue is necrotic from the implant's toxin, but the stasis process preserved the orientation of the nerve axons."

"So if you reversed the necrosis, he's still have his memories intact," said Garak.

"Well yes, but reviving dead cells is easier said than done," said Bashir. "They're a mess of intricate broken molecular machinery. It'd be like repairing a microscopic starship with a pair of tweezers. And then repeating that feat several trillion times, for every cell in his brain."

"Well can you replace them then?" suggested Garak, "use the existing neural paths as a the basis of a mold to lay down new cells."

Bashir shook his head, "What, fill his brain with gel, wash out the neurons once it dries, then fill it with live neurons like plastic?"

"Well something less crude than that but, yes essentially," said Garak. He held out his palms apologetically. "I only know the very basics of neural surgery, so you'll have forgive my naivete. I don't really know what's possible, especially when someone as accomplished as you has the knife."

A smile twitched across Bashir's blue face. "I appreciate your confidence Garak," he said, "But even I can't bring people back from the dead."

"Although," he said, staring into his brain schematics, "maybe I can speak with them."

"Pardon?" asked Garak.

"We fill his head with preserving gel just like you said," explained Bashir. "But we use a nonconductive material. Then we insert a series of electrodes into his brain. The dead neurons will still conduct electricity, and may even still act as functional logic gates. His brain can't produce electrical pulses on its own, but we might be able to probe it for responses. Send cascades of electricity down old thought patterns and see what emerges. If we're very, very lucky, we might even trigger speech."

Garak looked into the good doctor's eyes, hoping to see some grim resignation to the ghastly course he'd just proposed. But they sparkled with the same light they'd always had. He was enjoying this. A challenge he could sink his teeth into.

"Well," said Garak. "That sounds like a fascinating plan. It truly is a constant delight seeing what ghoulish idea will pop out of your brain next."

"Well if this works," said Bashir, "you can feel free to do the same thing to my head when I'm gone. And then you can pick my brain all you want."

"You'd do that," said Garak, concerned.

"Sure," replied Bashir, "it's certainly what I deserve."

Garak sighed. So Bashir did still have some idea of the lines they were crossing. Garak had alway ridiculed and tested that Federation softness in his friend's heart, but the truth was, he would hate to see the world swallow it completely. The last thing this cosmos needed was two Garaks.

The old spy walked over to the stasis pod and looked into the face of the corpse inside. "If you had known what we were going to do to you," he said to the vorta. "I suspect you would have taken the torture."

IIIIIIIIIIIII

The dead man's eyes fluttered under his eyelids. "Captured," he said. "Secrets, protect." No sound escaped his lips as he spoke, but probes along his throat recorded any subvocalizations, and the terminal played them as audio in real time.

Bashir and Garak were exploring the vorta's working memory. The last thoughts he'd had before committing suicide. They'd made much progress, but ultimately they weren't after his last thoughts, they were after his secrets.

Bashir looked at his brain scans, looked to which regions the currents had passed through. There were three bundles of light that looked promising, within the hippocampus, where long term declarative memories were stored, among other things. Bashir activated the closest electrode to one of the regions, and sent a rapid pulse of electricity, in a pattern he hoped would trigger recall, from what he knew of vorta neurology. The pulses danced through intricate circuits through the region, cascading into the frontal lobe. Bashir sent another pulse, designed to trigger speech, and on his map the circuits of light linked together, sending a fading current out of the brain and towards the vocal cords, and new thoughts came through the synthesized subvocals.

"Protect, state, duty, Founders," said the dead man.

It was a macabre game of word association, but it was working. He tried again with another cluster.

"Secrets, assignment, 'droids," was the response.

Bashir tried regions that had lit up from the "secrets" cluster, and eventually got to the "droids" one. He triggered it.

"Android, positronic, armor, factory."

They spent a few more hours working with the gelled brain, then they put the vorta back in storage, and set about researching what they'd learned. It would take a lot of record searching and investigations to confirm, but it looked like the Dominion was building robots. Maybe to replace the Jem'Hadar troops they were losing so steadily to the rebels. It was hard to tell at this stage, but this development looked vitally important. Bashir and Garak looked at each other. They both knew it was time to hit the field once more.

UUUUUUUUUUUU

Praetor Vreenak stood in the romulan war room with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the charts displayed on the viewscreen covering the wall. Between him and the viewscreen sat various military advisors and scientists around a slim table, each working at personal consoles as they directed the forces around Romulus. It reminded him somewhat of the bridge to a starship, with him as its captain.

"Report on the status of the Dominion fleet," he commanded one of his advisors.

"The nearest ship is a lightyear out," replied the officer, "but slowing down to rondeview with the bulk of the Dominion forces. The entire fleet should be here within 43 minutes."

It had taken the Dominion ships three weeks and 24 separate engagements to penetrate this far into romulan space, but they were finally here, the heart of the Romulan Empire. And at 217 warships, they still had over half the forces they'd committed to this campaign. Vreenak was impressed.

He was also worried. Most of Vreenak's ships were still spread out along the captured ex-Federation planets. When it had been clear that the Dominion had cut their losses along that front and sent their ships towards Romulus itself, Vreenak had kept his forces largely where they were. The battles within romulan space had slowed the Dominion fleet enough for a few needed reinforcements to get here in time, but most of the ships were better spent continuing the conquest of Dominion holdings. Vreenak had captured seventeen more ex-Federation star systems while the Dominion ships had made their way here, but at quite a cost: they only had 74 positronic ships guarding Romulus for this battle, making them outnumbered almost three to one on their own homeworld.

Vreenak had hoped he wouldn't have to do this. He had hoped the fleets along romulan space would have reduced the Dominion forces just a little more. But it was clear that as things currently stood, they would lose this battle. Even with their superior maneuverability, the positronic ships could not defeat a force three times their size. And Vreenak could not allow the Dominion to conquer Romulus. Without the heart of its government and culture, the Empire would surely collapse. And there was always the chance that the Dominion would do to the Romulan capital what they had done to the Federation's, and then 38 billion romulan citizens would be dead. No, Vreenak could not allow Romulus to fall. But to save Romulus, he would have to break his promise of a costless war.

"Is the reserve fleet ready?" asked Vreenak.

"Yes, sir Praetor," replied an admiral.

Everyone looked to Vreenak as he gave the order. They had all known this was coming.

"Deploy them," commanded their Praetor.

Even months into this war, the romulan fleet had not been fully retrofitted with positronic brains. The rush to enter the war had left them somewhat unprepared, and the focus had been on producing new ships, which could take better advantage of the lack of a crew. So there were still almost a hundred romulan warships undeployed around Romulus, each with a small complement of crew that had been on standby- just in case they were needed, but with assurances that it would likely never come to that. Assurances that had been utterly unjustified.

Vreenak smiled mirthlessly as the field commanders giddily reported in that their ships were heading into position, their voices full of bravado and pride. They were so excited for a taste of war you'd think they were klingon. But no, they were just loyal romulan soldiers, ready to give their lives for the Empire. He'd tried so hard to protect these men and women, with robots and manipulated resistance fighters, but now they were going to protect him. A wall of blood between their Praetor and the alien horde.

And Vreenak would have to let them become that wall.

IIIIIIIIIII

Rejel slumped into a nearby chair as she heard the news.

"They had another fleet?" she asked the vorta administrator.

"Apparently," he said, "they de-cloaked just as our ships entered the system."

She stared at the strategic display beside the table, updated as reports came in with new red dot's they'd never anticipated, and dwindling greens. And of course entire worlds across ex-Federation space sacrificed to this disaster. This could cost her people the Alpha Quadrant.

"Have they retreated?" she asked.

The vorta nodded, "Our warships prepared to leave almost the moment the ships decloaked. Of course by that point retreat was… costly. Only a third of our forces made it out of the system, and they still have to traverse lightyears of enemy territory- territory that we greatly weakened as we broke through, but still speckled with enough ships to further reduce our fleet if the Romulans choose to engage."

The vorta scowled, looking at the display, "It may have been better in the long run to simply to deal as much damage as they could in defeat. But I suppose the cardassians commanders felt the lives of their soldiers were worth preserving. And once they were leaving the Jem'Hadar were best spent following them. You'll have to have a talk with those Guls if they make it back. I know the chain of command can get somewhat murky in the heat of combat, but-"

"They made the right decision," said Rejel curtly. She'd be damned if she let this underling punish her commanders for trying to salvage a few lives from this trap. As far as she was concerned, anyone who made it home was a hero.

"The Dominion doesn't waste its citizens on petty vengeance," she said. "Not the Dominion that inspired Cardassia to join with it and unite this war torn galaxy. The Romulans have automated ships. They'd rebuild any forces they lost in a month, while we would lose irreplaceable soldiers."

Even the Jem'Hadar were precious now, after rebels had destroyed the last Jem'Hadar cloning facility. And since they were still cut off from the equipment and expertise of the Gamma Quadrant, it could take them years to construct another.

"Forgive me," said the vorta. "I'm still not used to dealing with finite troops."

UUUUUUUUU

Gul Vissad tapped his fingers against her armrest restlessly. She commanded one of the finest warships in the quadrant, yet while her brothers and sisters were out there dying to Romulan robots, she was stuck guarding some backwater dead ex-Federation colony. Her superiors must be fools.

She understood it was important to investigate their missing head Dominion administrator, but a small scout ship could have done this. The vorta was almost certainly dead, what would he care if his rescuers were in something less than a flagship?

"Gul Vissad," said her science officer over the comms, "I'm picking up a feint buildup of neutrinos within the rocks."

This was interesting. In the months they'd been stationed here, the ruins hadn't made so much as a peep. Her science team had set up every sensor known to Cardassian and Dominion science, probed the site with every particle possible in space and subspace, even chipped away bits of rock for remote study. Nothing they did betrayed these ruins as anything more than carved stone. Vissad had even suspected that's all they were, that the energy beam that captured Weyoun had been caused by a cloaked ship that had long since gone. But now, finally, the ruins were doing something.

"The build up is spiking," said her science officer. "I think it's- wha-."

"What's going on Mayvon?" Gul Vissad demanded. "Hello?"

"Mam, I'm getting energy distortions all over the planet," said the navigation officer, reading the ship's sensors. "One of them's at the ruins. I'm reading… I don't know what I'm reading."

"Get me a visual of nearest distortion," commanded Vissad.

On the viewscreen was an image of the planet's surface, somewhere over the south continent. Over a forest of desiccated trees, a massive ring of purple light hovered. Out of the ring a tangle of glowing white crystal grew in a branching pattern, reaching towards the center. Within seconds, the crystal branches met at the center, and fused in a structure that looked for all the world like it had started in the center and branched outward, rather than forming inward like she had seen. The ring of light vanished, and the crystal thing just hung there, over the forest, in defiance of gravity.

"How big?" Vissad asked, unsure of the scale of the forest below.

"About 900 meters in diameter, if you take the closest fitting sphere," replied the navigation officer. God that was three times their size. Bigger even than a d'deridex Romulan warbird. And if it was indeed the creature mentioned in their reports of this world, far more deadly. This was a planet eater.

"How many?"

"Twenty four mam," said the officer, "all floating half a kilometer above the planet's surface."

"Put the ruins on screen," said Vissad.

"Hello Gul Vissad," cut in Myvon over the comms, before the navigation officer put it on. "I um, I have Weyoun here for you."

IIIIIIIIIIIII

Weyoun shimmered into being with a smile on his face. Stepping off the transporter pad, he regarded Vissad with a measured look, then his eyes sparkled with recognition.

"Gul Vissad," he said warmly, "I want to thank you and your crew for waiting here so faithfully for my return. I assure you that your loyalty will not go unrewarded. Now may we take this conversation to your bridge, there is a lot for us to do."

Vissad had never met Weyoun before; she wondered if he had studied the names and faces of every Gul in the cardassian military. Or maybe just the important ones. But how had he returned? And why were the crystalline entities still hanging around the planet, unmoving? Weyoun had much to explain. Too bad it wasn't her place to demand answers.

When they returned to the bridge, Weyoun strolled to one of the officers and ordered them to send out a short range subspace signal with a harmonic frequency of 21 gigahurtz. The officer obeyed, without even looking at Vissad for confirmation. Vissad felt a touch of pride in the young officer; she had taught him well. A look would have seemed disloyal, and the officer knew that if Vissad had wanted him to refuse Weyoun's orders, she would have told him to cancel them.

Though she almost wondered if she should have canceled the orders. She had no idea what the signal was for, and with 24 planet eating abominations below them, she was nervous about lighting any beacons right now.

"Weyoun, I wouldn't want to overstep my bounds," she said, "but if you could-"

"Ease your worries about the Entities on the planet below?" Weyoun offered in a concerned tone. "Yes I should have done that already, I apologize."

He turned to the rest of the bridge crew and declared with joyous confidence, "You have nothing to fear from crystalline entities. I have been in contact with them for the last month, and they have agreed to join the Dominion."

Now everyone did look to Vissad.

Cardassia had been forced to ally themselves with many creatures these past few years. Clones, shapeshifting monsters, even bajorans for a time. All in the name of becoming stronger. But this… this was madness. Of course it wasn't her place to decide what was too far. It wasn't Weyoun's either. Cardassia had a leader, and Rejel would decide when to abandon the Dominion. For now, Vissad would listen to the chattering vorta.

"I've just had you send a simple message to the Entities," Weyoun continued, "to let them know I'm aboard. They'll follow for now, until I have more detailed orders for them. On that note," the vorta said, walking over to Vissad and speaking softly directly to her, "any updates you could give me on the state of the Dominion would be greatly appreciated. Obviously I did not have access to many intelligence reports during my… sabbatical."

Gul Vissad took him into her ready room and gave him a quick summary of the Romulan war, the automated warships, the lost planets and rebellions in occupied territory, the destruction of the Jem'Hadar cloning facilities, and the current retreat of the Dominion invasion fleet.

"Oh deer," said Weyoun when she'd finished. "Things have not gone at all well in my absence." He stared off into space for a moment, then looked at her.

"Well Vissad," he said, "I have decided how to reward you for waiting here so patiently: I hereby order you to rendezvous with the retreating fleet. And together with them, and the Entities I've brought with me, I shall give you a glorious victory."

And with that he headed back to the bridge. He ordered the comm officer to send a message to the retreating fleet, using his authorization code, telling them to change course and meet him at the Galdeva sector, along the former Romulan-Federation border. Then he had another message sent to Cardassia High Command, informing them that he had returned, and was taking charge of the invasion of Romulus. The vorta then pulled a data rod out of his shirt pocket and walked to the bridge engineering officer and handed it to him.

"This rod," he said, "contains the specifications for a modification to our deflector array. Please upload the data into our computer, and then assign an engineering team to performing the modifications. When we're closer to the Dominion fleet I'll send the specs to them as well."

Weyoun clasped his hands together and turned to Gul Vissad.

"Don't look so worried Gul," he said, smiling, "I'm going to fix everything."

UUUUUUU

Vreenak stood at a podium inside the conference hall of a warbird, hands held in a romulan salute, as he paid honor to the citizens who had given their lives for the Romulan Star Empire. With him were several senators, admirals, captains from the battle, and of course, families of the departed. It was a somewhat rushed affair; the invasion had been less than a day ago. The repelled Dominion warfleet had only just left romulan space, traveling as fast as their ships could carry them. But it was romulan tradition to have military funerals quickly, so that families could still see the wreckage of enemy ships, and know their loved ones had not died in vain. In keeping with this custom, their ship's position ensured that the massive window behind the Praetor's podium held a view of a broken Keldon class cardassian cruiser; one which had been destroyed by the Krichala, a fallen D'deridex warbird whose crew had left behind the most family here today.

Only seven warships had been lost. Along with several casualties in the surviving ships, there had been 437 deaths in total. 437 sacrifices he just couldn't find a way around. 437 broken promises.

Still, the mood of the ceremony couldn't help a certain celebratory feel. This had been a huge victory for the Romulan Star Empire, perhaps _the _decisive victory of this war, which would ensure Romulus's place in history as the ruler of the Alpha Quadrant.

IIIIIII

After the ceremony, Vreenak marched through the hallways of the warbird towards his temporary office, while he waited for the ship to return to orbit around Romulus, where he could beam back to the capitol. At sublight speeds, it would take a few hours from their current position at the edge of the solar system where the battle had been fought. While he walked, a rushed aid came up and handed him a datapad. The pad detailed a set of scans taken by a border probe along the former romulan Neutral Zone. It showed an unexpected detour in the Dominion fleet. It showed the fleet joining with gigantic alien _things _not yet identified. It showed the fleet turning around and heading this way once more.

The invasion wasn't over.

IIIIIIII

It had taken several hours to identify the Entities flying with the Dominion. Ultimately an obscure intelligence report of a catastrophe befalling several ex-Federation colonies matched the sensor readings. Vreenak immediately called for the evacuation of Romulus. He doubted more than a tenth of the population could leave the planet before the invaders reached here again, but it was better than nothing. Of course, the evacuation should be unnecessary. The report included the precise sonic frequency Starfleet had used to destroy the last Crystal they'd encountered, and every one of the romulan warships had now been calibrated to deploy said weapon. However, Vreenak suspected the Dominion had some way to counter this defence, if they were assaulting them with these creatures. But who knows? Maybe the Dominion were just desperate, and were gambling on the hope that Romulus lacked this critical intel.

Vreenak stood on the bridge of a small civilian science vessel, along with several other Senators. Key members of the Romulan government were also scattered within the evacuating civilian fleet, along with high ranking scientists, teachers, engineers, artists, and historians to preserve Romulan culture and knowledge. If the worst should happen, the Romulan Star Empire would not die with its capital.

The Praetor felt like a coward for leaving with the civilians instead of staying with the military to fight for his planet. But the fact was he was no soldier. His strength was strategy, not tactics; the admirals would be fine in this battle without him. And there wasn't any safe place in the system for him to stay to observe the battle. Not with planet killers on the way.

He looked down at the planet before as his ship departed, and hoped his armies would be able to save the 34 billion citizens below who would not be able to leave in time.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Gul Vissad sat in her chair, in command of the Dominion flagship, with Weyoun standing by her side. They were moments from entering the star system of the Romulan capital. Her ship was at the head of the fleet, along with twenty three others. In front of each ship flew a Crystalline Entity, buffered against sonic attacks by a stabilizing field emitted by the ship's deflector dishes. Behind were waves of Jem'Hadar and cardassian warships ready to attack any enemy forces that attacked a field ship, and ready to take a field ship's place should one fall. As long as the field ships held, the Entities would be indestructible, acting as a massive barricade for the ships behind them- and more importantly, acting as juggernauts unstoppably flying to consume the planet. As long as a single Entity reached Romulus, it would be begin draining all ordered complexity its biosphere, leaving behind nothing but ash and dessicated shells of bitrious matter. And it would not take its time, like it had on the colony worlds.

The Gul clenched her jaw, and prepared herself for what she would have to do. It's not like they hadn't destroyed a planet before, for the Dominion. The former Federation capitol had been exterminated as well. And that had been a premeditated execution of a planet already under their control. This was just a casualty of war. The only way they could defeat an enemy they had already failed to conquer conventionally.

So why did this feel so wrong? Was it because she was working with monsters? Helping them feed and allying herself against life itself. Or maybe it was just because she had to kill the world herself this time, instead of hearing about it days later like with Earth. That was probably all this was, a reluctance to get her hands dirty. Well she was a Gul in the cardassian military; she would have to get over it.

Vissad looked to Weyoun. The vorta stared reverently at the apocalyptic Entity on their viewscreen, oblivious to her. Maybe she felt uneasy because she knew this wouldn't be the last planet. Maybe she knew that this would be Weyoun's prefered policy now, in order to feed the crystals. Maybe she knew that it wasn't the Entities working for them, but the other way around. The Dominion had become an army of death, helping monsters devour the galaxy and leaving ash in their wake. And Cardassia could not be a part of that.

But that was politics. Whether Cardassia stayed with the Dominion and the crystals was something for others to decide, in the future. For now, the enemy was before her, a key obstacle between her people and the Alpha Quadrant. And Vissad would do her duty as a soldier of Cardassia.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

The armies met at the edge of the star system. Positronic warbirds and Romulan citizens against engineered supersoldiers and cardassians hiding behind unstoppable crystal weapons. Diving towards Romulus, it would take 83 minutes for the invaders to reach the planet. The Romulan fleet had that long to destroy each of the 24 Crystalline Entities.

The crystals proved impervious to conventional attack, and with the Dominion ships buffering them, they were immune to sonic weapons. The Romulans quickly began flying around the crystals to target the buffering ships at their back, but this tactic forced them into positions vulnerable to the Dominion ships at the wings. The maneuverable positronic ships still managed to take out several buffer ships despite this disadvantage, and with impeccable coordination destroyed the unprotected crystals with sonic bombardment before new buffer ships could replace them. However by the time the invaders were seven minutes from Romulus, seven Entities remained, and most of the Romulan fleet was destroyed.

At this point it was clear that Romulus could not be saved. The Crystals would reach the planet. Meanwhile, every ship capable of flight had already left, stranding the 34 billion that couldn't be evacuated without multiple trips or reinforcements. The engaged fleet still had 23 manned ships, and 14 of the remaining positronic vessels were refits, still capable of life support. So the call was made. Those 37 ships turned back towards the planet, while the rest of the fleet held back any Dominion fighters that may follow.

The returning ships did not enter orbit. Their flyby lasted barely seconds. On automatic, their transporters beamed Romulan lifesigns into their cabins. No parameters were set, the computers beamed anyone, whoever happened to be closest. Each ship took on hundreds, filling every room, every hallway, every maintenance duct. The overtaxed life support systems had to release chemicals to induce medical comas, so the survivors wouldn't need so much oxygen. This left the manned vessels without active personnel, but their computers had been ordered to follow the positronic ships, and they would know where to go.

Of course this act meant the soldiers wouldn't have the last man stand that their heroic spirits demanded, but ultimately this gesture seemed to have more substance. It didn't matter that the few extra thousand saved was insignificant compared to the teeming billions they'd abandoned. What mattered was they'd rescued _someone_. Just a few more lives snatched from the gaping monstrosities set upon them.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Kali didn't understand why Mother were crying, but he knew he should be frightened. Mother never cried. She'd always said tears were unbecoming of a Romulan citizen, had always told him to have more pride than that. So Kali knew that if his mother was crying, it had to be over something big.

They were huddled in the basement. They'd been there for a while. It was dark and cold, but they had a padd with them. It was showing a very pretty crystal in the sky, hovering over Nalthrack. Kali could tell it was Nalthrack because he recognized the central spire of one of the buildings from his books. It was the capital city of the northern continent. He'd never been to Nalthrack, but Mother had told him that if he was very good, he'd get to go to university there one day.

On the padd, the sky was getting very cloudy. And then the buildings started to crumble, like they'd been made of dry sand. Then the picture went away, and said "Lost Signal." Kali looked to Mother, and she hugged him tighter. She told him everything was going to be alright. She told him that she loved him, and that they were going to see Father very soon. Kali thought this was strange, because he didn't have a Father. He knew this because he'd learned in school that children were supposed to have Fathers, so he'd asked Mother where his was, and she'd told him that he'd lost his in an accident. Accidents were when you did something bad and didn't want to say you were sorry.

Suddenly Kali felt something tugging at him, and he hurt all over. Then the ceiling above them collapsed and they were covered under a mountain of dust and the weight was crushing them but Kali couldn't tell because he was in pain he was in so much pain. He tried to scream but dust filled his mouth and it hurt so much everywhere.

The boy's cells fizzed apart as entropy ran wild through collapsing macromolecules. The complexity of his pattern was feasted upon, sucked up like juice from a fleshy rind. And then all that was left under the dust, was more dust.

UUUUUUUU

Rejel stared at the triumphant vorta through her office viewscreen with unmasked loathing on her face. His ship was now three days from Cardassia, where he planned to return as a conquering hero, and lay out the details for his new Dominion-Entity alliance.

"So you're going to keep working with those _things,_" accused Rejel.

"Of course," said Weyoun. "We'll have to bring more through to replace those we've lost, but then we can begin sweeping through this quadrant."

"What, one planet wasn't enough?" asked Rejel with a sneer.

Weyoun looked at her, concerned. "You seem upset," he said. "I assure you the Dominion won't cause any more destruction than necessary. Once everyone sees that it's either join us or face annihilation, the other worlds will fall in line. If anything, our new allies will stop this war, and save lives, not end them."

"Save lives? You just murdered billions!" shouted Rejel.

Weyoun waved that off, "Billions of enemies of the state. Surely a cardassian understands the need for that from time to time. I'm sure you didn't get this worked up over Earth."

"Earth didn't happen under my watch," Rejel said. "This did. I can't believe I let Cardassia become a part of this."

Weyoun became stern, "Understand one thing Rejel. You didn't 'let' anything. You are a servant of the Dominion. Nothing more."

"I am more than that," said Rejel. "I am the leader of Cardassia. And I cannot stand by while you plan to bring more of these horrors into the Alpha Quadrant. Don't forget I've been to Omicron Theta. I've seen their aftermath." Rejel shuddered. "I can't let that empty wasteland become a common sight in the galaxy."

Rejel stood up from her chair, looked into the desk's viewscreen, and declared, "Cardassia hereby succeeds from the Dominion."

Weyoun shook his head, "You poor naive child, I should have known this position was too much for you."

The transmission ended.

Rejel was sure Weyoun would move against her soon. This was bad. She had no plan, nothing prepared, and she had just informed Weyoun that she was his enemy the second she'd become one. She didn't know what to do.

Well, Rejel had some ideas. With her authorisation still for the moment intact, she ordered an immediate site to site transporter beam into a bunker she knew was manned almost exclusively by cardassian soldiers.

She beamed into a small room with two soldiers, a Gul and a Glinn. "Gentlemen," she said, "I'm afraid things are about to get complicated." She turned to the Gul and asked, "Are you and your men ready to follow my orders above all others?"

The two cardassians looked at eachother, then turned to her. The Gul said, "You are the leader of Cardassia. There's no one above you, as far as I'm concerned. Though I suppose I should never say that with a vorta or jem'hadar nearby."

Rejel smiled. "Speaking of that," she said, "how many jem'hadar are in this bunker?"

"Four," said the Gul.

"Good," said Rejel. "I'm going to need you to kill them, and turn on this bunker's shields."

"Are we turning against the Dominion?" asked the Gul.

Rejel nodded. "I'm also going to need to access your communication network. Hopefully I still have my authorisations to send messages on the primary broadcast."

IIIIIIIIII

Rejel's face appeared on every viewscreen in Cardassia.

"Citizens of Cardassia," she began, keeping her voice steady. "A few hours ago the Dominion committed an atrocity unbecoming of an ally of Cardassia. Under the leadership of Weyoun, our warfleet joined with Crystalline Entities, extradimensional creatures that drain all life from planets. Weyoun fed Romulus to these monsters, killing billions of the civilians we had sought to rule.

"And he plans to do it again. He plans to bring more Entities into our universe, and assault more planets with them. That is what the Dominion is now: not conquerors, but slaughterers. Well my brave citizens, that is not Cardassia. _We_ do not kill civilians when we don't have to. _We_ do not lead monsters to our enemies. _We_ fight them ourselves.

"So I have formally withdrawn Cardassia from the Dominion. And together, my citizens, we shall take this quadrant away from them. The Dominion has already lost their Jem'Hadar cloning facilities, and most of their warships have been destroyed fighting the Romulans. They have turned to these crystals out of desperation. Out of weakness.

"But we," finished Rejel, "are not weak. We are the true rulers of this quadrant. So rise up Cardassia. Remove these Jem'Hadar soldiers still walking unwelcome on our soil. Cut down the last of their ships, and take our place in history."

IIIIIIIIII

The bunker didn't last long under Dominion bombardment. Once the shields were down, the Jem'Hadar beamed in. The cardassians didn't last long after that. Rejel eventually found herself in a room full of dead men and women, with three Dominion thugs pointing weapons in her face. A transporter's shimmer later, and Rejel stood in a detention cell, with Weyoun staring at her from behind a forcefield.

"Well," said the vorta with a jovial grin. "I think that may have been the shortest lived rebellion on record. I think you've earned yourself a footnote in a Dominion history book for that little display."

He turned to a nearby aid. "Schedule her execution for tomorrow," he said disdainfully. "Make it public, of course," he added.

IIIIIIIIII

Weyoun watched as the cardassian artisans finished their work. They stood in the middle of a forest, in a clearing he'd had prepared with Dominion disruptor fire. Before him was a stone floor, with rings of concentric pillars, all carved identically to the ruins on Omicron Theta.

Once the work was complete, the artisans walked out of the replica, carrying their tools with them. A vorta overseer approached Weyoun, "The last markings are in place," he said. "Exactly to your specifications."

"Excellent," he congratulated the subordinate.

"If I may pry sir," braved the overseer, "I've been told that this structure is supposed to bring in more of the crystals, to bring back those we lost at Romulus."

"Not replace," corrected Weyoun. "Bring back. You cannot kill an Entity, only shatter it's presence in this universe. And now I am going to reassert that presence."

"Ah," said the overseer. "But what I don't understand is, how can mere carvings do this?"

"They can't of course," replied Weyoun. He waved to the artisans' work, "This is all just scratched stone."

Weyoun nodded to a vorta technician behind him, and the technician walked into the center of the replica ruins, carrying a glowing device. The vorta placed it on the floor, and then returned, handing Weyoun a controler. He pressed it, and there was a flash of blinding purple light, and sounds as if the world was shattering. Then the light and sounds were gone, and everything looked the same, except the device was gone. Weyoun took out an omnisensor, and began scanning the stone, nodding.

"But now," said Weyoun, turning to the overseer, "the markings are in a place where patterns mean everything. Now this structure is a gateway."

Weyoun walked past the pillars and into the center of the markings. "And I," he said, "am the key."

Once he reached the center, space seemed to ripple, and above them, a light ripped across the sky in a ring, and crystals grew out of it, forming into one of the creatures that devoured Romulus.

Weyoun returned from the structure, and called to the technician. The technician looked to a datapad, and told him, "Our satellites report that seventeen Entities have appeared over Cardassia."

"Excellent," said Weyoun. "we have our full complement again."

IIIIIIIIII

Rejel sat in her cell with her head in her hands. An hour. Her attempted revolution had lasted an hour. How could she have failed so completely?

How could she have expected anything more? She was a scientist, not a leader. She'd had no idea what she was getting into. Rejel counted her mistakes, and the weight of their numbers crushed her. She shouldn't have told Weyoun her decision, obviously. She should have given herself some time, come up with a plan. Picked a more heavily fortified bunker. Used a less traceable signal to broadcast her speech. Looked before she lept even a little. But of course she hadn't. She'd been too brash, too naive, too inexperienced. And now she'd be executed in the morning. _So this is what happens when puppets try to fight back? A quick cut of the strings and they collapse like so much ineffectual wood. _

Suddenly the lights went out. Rejel heard shouting echoing through the corridors. One of the two Jem'Hadar soldiers guarding her cell motioned to the other and he walked down the room to check the hallway. A flash of green light and he was down. The soldier by her cell sidestepped from his potentially known position started firing blindly into the corridor entrance. Rejel heard a scream from up ahead, then three figures stormed into the corridor, shots firing. Another of the figures fell, along with the Jem'Hadar. One of the figures approached Rejel, and reached a hand through the depowered cell.

It was Silani.

"Mind if we join your rebellion?" asked the vorta.


	10. Chapter 10: Homeland

Empires' End

Chapter 10: Homeland

Legate Vissad sat in the bridge of her flagship, pondering the chain of command. The vorta Kilana stood by her side, Weyoun's appointed representative for this invasion fleet. In theory, Vissad answered to her. However, the men under Vissad's command would not hesitate to follow her if she betrayed Kilana's orders. Vissad held the real power here, and the only thing that kept her in check was her loyalty to the Cardassian government- but who was the "Cardassian government" right now?

A day ago, Vissad would have said it was Rejel. But now Rejel was rotting in a cell, scheduled for execution in the morning. Executed for attempting to secede from the Dominion. Vissad had assumed that was Rejel's right, had even counted on it once Weyoun started working with the Crystals. Vissad had hoped that Rejel would end Cardassia's alliance with the Dominion, so she wouldn't have to fight for them anymore. But after Rejel had done exactly that, Vissad still found herself answering to a vorta on her bridge, escorting planet eaters to Vulcan. What had happened?

Perhaps Rejel had never been the head of the Cardassian government. There was no Cardassian government, only puppets of the Dominion. And when Rejel had overstepped her part, she'd been dealt with. Vissad wondered if that had been what happened to Dumar. If he'd gone off script too, and had been quietly "lost" to a skirmish with rebels and replaced. And then his replacement had done the same thing, except this time, she'd managed to get the word out before she could be silenced. This time, the strings broke on stage for the audience to see.

"Legate," said her comms officer, "We just lost all contact with Cardassia."

"Every channel?" asked Vissad.

"Yes mam."

"Contact the other ships in our fleet," she ordered. "See if they have the same problem."

The comms officer worked for a few moments, then nodded.

"Keep trying to reach them," said Vissad. She rubbed the bridge of her nose methodically as she thought. What was happening back there?

IIIIIIIIIIIII

Praetor Vreenak sat with his generals in a command room on Vulcan. The Dominion fleet was a day away, with another 24 of those Crystals. The Empire had done its best to be ready for them. Vreenak had the bulk of the Romulan fleets with him, and the Vulcan shipyards would produce several more ships before the Dominion's arrival. His generals had spent the better part of a week devising tactics to attack the buffer ships without entering compromising positions, and his ships were already getting into formation, waiting cloaked to attack the Dominion from behind.

But still Vreenak felt, unprepared. The best romulan and vulcan scientists had worked tirelessly on a way to counter the buffering field of the ship's deflector dishes, an effective alternative to sonic weapons, or a defence against their extropy absorption, to no avail. And even after gathering together so many of his ships, after their losses at Romulus, they added up to only marginally better numbers than they'd had in the last battle with the Crystals.

Vreenak looked out a window. The streets were empty, it's people evacuated on a thousand departing vessels. But in the distance, he could see the burnt orange of a setting sun, the crumbling walls of ancient temple built into the cliff face of an eroding mountain, and the endless desert. This was the planet that had birthed two races. He would not be the man to let it die.

IIIIIIIIIIIII

Once again, two fleets met at the outskirts of a solar system, positronic protectors versus the armies of death. But this time, events played differently. Just as the two fleets entered range of each other, the cardassians turned on the Dominion. Nine of of the twenty four Crystals had been defended by cardassian buffer ships, and were destroyed immediately as their would be defenders deactivated their deflector pulses and began sonic bombardment. The jem'hadar quickly tried to regroup around the remaining thirteen, but the cardassian ships were distributed throughout their fleet, and romulan warbirds were decloaking behind their lines. Within minutes, the last of the crystals were destroyed. Not long after that, the last jem'hadar were mopped up.

IIIIIIIIIII

As the cardassians prepared to leave Vulcan space, Vissad contacted the Romulan leader, Praetor Vreenak. He appeared on her viewscreen, sitting behind a table.  
>"I take it you are the one in charge of the Cardassian fleet?" he asked.<p>

Vissad nodded, "Legate Vissad, leader of the Cardassian rebellion. The invasion of your planet seemed like a good opportunity to eliminate some Jem'Hadar."

Vreenak smiled wearily, "Glad my ships could be of service. I wish you'd given us some warning of your intentions, so we could have coordinated our attack, but I can see how that may have been impossible without tipping off the Dominion."

Vissad smiled, "Quite impossible."

Vreenak nodded. "Well I must admit Legate, I'm not fond of being in someone's debt. However I do recognize when I am. If your fleet would like… asylum from Dominion reprisal, we'd be happy to bring you into the fold."

Vissad shook her head. "We can take care of ourselves. And right now we have a capitol to retake."

Vreenak frowned. "Cardassia has been seemingly under a communications blackout for almost a week now. Would your rebellion have something to do with it?"

"Not my rebellion," said Vissad. "But likely someone's. Cardassia has recently lost a head of state under… troubling circumstances. I don't think anyone on my home planet is fond of the Dominion right now."

"Well, if you'd like a contingent of romulan ships to help retake your capital," Vreenak offered.

Vissad shook her head again. "Don't take this the wrong way," she said. "But I've no intention of inviting even more aliens to my homeland."

Vreenak smiled, "Well it was worth a try. Give the Dominion a bloody nose for me."

IIIIIIIIII

Kilana paced in her cell as Vissad entered the brig.

"I thought Vorta committed suicide once they were captured," said Vissad.

"Only when necessary to prevent revealing state secrets under torture," replied Kilana. She turned towards Vissad with an icy stare. "But you already know everything I know. Because you were a _trusted_ servant of the Dominion." Kilana smiled, "Besides, I want to live to see you die under the bootheels of Jem'Hadar."

Vissad shook her head, "No I don't think that's it. I think it's because most of the Vorta cloning facilities were eliminated by rebels along with the Jem'Hadar hatcheries. The only one left is the Genesis Gate back on Cardassia, and we have no idea what's going on there." Vissad smiled, toothily. "I think you're worried that for the first time, you could be the last Kilana. I've read your profile. You've self terminated several times, even outside of capture scenarios. When the Genesis Gate finally started making new vorta lines, your active copies willingly committed suicide just so you could go back to having one clone at a time. I think you've actually bought into the idea that clones make you immortal. And now, for the first time, you're facing the prospect of your own death."

Kilana snarled in an almost primal rage.

Vissad nodded. "That's what I thought. Well Kilana, I'd like to help stay alive, but unfortunately you were right about those state secrets. You don't have anything for me so," she casually deactivated the cell's force field and raised her disrupter.

"No! Wait!" screamed Kilana. "I do have information. I know how Weyoun revives his Crystals. I know the location of two factories he's using to replace our lost troops with robots. I know the passcodes for the automated defences around Chintaka. I know the Founders are dead. I've overheard potentially treasonous talk from several new vorta lines. I know things! Please don't-"

Vissad reactivated the forcefield and lowered her weapon. "There," she said. "And we didn't even have to start the torture."

UUUUUUUUU

Kira stared out the window of the promenade, watching the space where the celestial temple would open its aperture, if ships still traveled through it. When DS9 was a port of call, and the rest of the galaxy finally seemed like a place worth exploring, perhaps even joining. Not an endless source of oppression and war.

Her people had managed to kick out the Dominion, the last ships had been drawn away to battle with the Romulans, and the Bajorans surrounded and killed the last jem'hadar and cardassians once their support was cut off. They really should have left at least one warship behind. But then, empires had always been underestimating her people. Celebrations were sprouting across the entire planet-

But Kira wasn't joining them. She knew this war with the Romulans would settle down eventually. The two empires would draw their new boarders, and inevitably Bajor would find itself on one side or the other. And then the ships would come.

"Vedic Kira," said an approaching soldier, "your shuttle is ready."

"Thank you," Kira replied, and followed him to an old Bajoran craft docked at the station.

Kira entered the craft alone, and piloted it towards the wormhole. For the first time in over a year, it opened. She flew inside, her faith in the Prophets enough to remove any fear of vaporization. Once inside the aperture, she piloted the shuttle to a full stop, left the controls, and opened the Orb.

"You have a favor to ask us," said Odo on the promenade, a Prophet in a vision.

"Yes," said Kira.

The Prophet looked through the window. "You want the stars to go away."

Kira nodded, "They've brought Bajor nothing but trouble."

"That's not entirely true," said a Prophet, Sisko behind his old desk. "Trade and foreign aid has at times brought prosperity. And exchanges with other peoples has enriched your culture."

Kira shook her head, "It hasn't been worth the price."

"No," agreed the Sisko Prophet, standing over the mines of Gallitep. "Perhaps not."

"But such a decision cannot be made by Gods alone," said Dax Prophet, dressed as a Vedek. "This is Bajor's decision. And so it must come from Bajor.

"Then let it be made by me," said Kira. "I've walked across this planet, I've heard the cries of my people. If anyone can speak for them, let it be me."

"Such confidence," said a Prophet as Kai Winn, smiling. "You have learned well."

"The decision came from Bajor," said Sisko Prophet, surrounded by glowing white. "Bajor is of us now."

IIIIIIIIIII

The aperture of the wormhole opened once more, and began to grow. The station was quickly swallowed inside. Then the wormhole moved, traveling into the inner solar system. By the time it reached Bajor, the aperture was over 500,000 km wide, large enough to swallow the planet and each of its moons all at once. And it did so, gently, keeping the orbits intact. And Bajor came to rest within the wormhole, kept lit by the soft blue glow of folded spacetime. Then the aperture closed, and the wormhole collapsed in both Quadrants into the dormant singularity the Emissary had found, and Bajor was finally alone with its Prophets, safe inside the Celestial Temple.

UUUUUUUU

In his office, Weyoun frowned as he read another projection. Without more soldiers, he would lose this planet within a week. The Cardassians had entered full scale rebellion once Rejel escaped. He'd had to order a jamming field set up just to prevent it from spreading. In the first minutes of battle, he'd lost eight of his Jem'Hadar ships to the treacherous cardassian warships that were supposed to be protecting this world. The last of the rebel ships were destroyed in the assault, but now there were only three Dominion ships in solar system, and Weyoun just couldn't afford to bring in more without losing territory on the front to the romulans. Of course, three ships were more than enough keep a planet in line- if only he had the troops to occupy the ground.

Weyoun typed into his terminal and contacted his android factory. When he'd returned to Cardassia, he had been pleased that the project had continued successfully during his absence, using the data obtained from Soong's lab. Two factories had been constructed in secret, one of which was in Cardassia's star system, built into the lifeless rock of its fourth planet.

"Weyoun," said the head administrator for the facility.

"I'm afraid the latest projections are worse than I'd hoped" said Weyoun. "I know I promised you a few more days to finalize the designs before you started production, but that just isn't an option now. Spend a few hours to get everything in working order, and then activate the machinery. I need the first wave of troops to be online within two days."

The vorta nodded. "We'll have the factory running by the end of the day, sir."

IIIIIIIIII

Inside an underground bunker, Silani cackled maniacally from behind her terminal.

"What are you reading?" asked Rejel.

"Projections we stole from Dominion Intelligence," she replied. "Apparently they think even less of their chances then I do. Any day now Weyoun will get desperate enough to bring in soldiers from the front, and once ships are coming to and from Cardassia, there's no way he'll be able to prevent us from communicating with the rest of the Dominion. And then this revolution will go Quadrant wide."

Suddenly Rejel realized something she should have thought of days ago.

"Actually," she told Silani, "Weyoun may have another source of troops." Rejel told Silani what she knew of the Dominion's positronic research. "Before I left, they were months away from production, but the equipment was in place, and they had functional designs. If Weyoun gets desperate enough, he may have them mass produce the prototypes."

Silani closed her terminal and stared off into space for a few minutes. Rejel waited while she thought. Finally, Silani asked Rejel, "When you were in charge of the Dominion while Weyoun was trapped with the Crystals, did you spend a lot of time overseeing the android project?"

Rejel nodded, "I spent a lot of time with it actually. It was fascinating. I, umm, am sort of regretting how much attention and resources I gave it, now."

"If you got into the factory, do you think you could co opt it for our rebellion?" asked Silani.

Rejel thought for a moment. She did know most of the systems, and if she could get to the source code, she might be able to rewrite their command keys. "I think I'd have a chance," she said.

"Alright then," said Silani. "I guess what we need now is a ship."

IIIIIIIIIIIII

From his Dominion warship in orbit, Weyoun beamed down to the android factory. The first wave of soldiers had been produced, and he wanted to give them a personal inspection before activating them. I vorta administrator lead him into a large room filled with hundreds of robots, standing frozen in rows. A rushed job, these machines lacked the finer features of the original. Their faces looked more like helmets, their hands more like claws, and a long angular visor was embedded where their eyes should be. The overall effect was… intimidating.

"We're ready to activate them," said the administrator. "At your command."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," said Weyoun. He pointed to a random robot in the first row. "Start by activating that one," he said. He then waved over his two accompanying Jem'Hadar, and they raised their weapons and aimed at the robot.

"I assure you these units are perfectly safe," said the administrator, nervously. "They were built along the same lines as our last prototype, and we had no problems with it."

"That prototype wasn't built in a factory set up for mass production," said Weyoun. "Nor was it built during a rebellion. I rebellion that included a number of vorta. So unless you can vouch for every vorta under your command, I'd suggest we tread _cautiously_. I'm sure you understand."

With a sight, the vorta tapped into a nearby console, and after a few moments their selected robot booted up, red lights pulsing across its visor like a mark three scanner.

"Raise your left hand," he told the soldier. It did so. Weyoun turned to the administrator, "So far so good." Next he turned to a random technician, and told him to give the robot an order. It obeyed that too.

The administrator shook his head, "That, that shouldn't have happened."

"No," said Weyoun. "It should only obey orders from authorized personnel. Here," he said, walking over to the vorta's console. "The default setting may just be too lenient. Let's see if it I can narrow it with a overide order." He sent it an electronic order with his passcodes. Voice and facial recognition was enough to recognize authorized users, but root access was only granted with electronic command keys. And only Weyoun had those codes. But the codes weren't working.

"It's not accepting my access code," said Weyoun.

"Can you shut it down?" asked the administrator.

Weyoun tried, then shook his head. None of his codes were working. He turned to the robot and vocally ordered it, "Shut Down." It did.

Two engineers rushed over to the malfunctioning machine and opened its access port, linking a padd into its positronic brain. After a few moments one of them spoke up, "Its access keys have been switched so our passcodes won't work. It's memory also contains an electronic command to follow unauthorized orders- probably to avoid tipping us off."

Weyoun contacted the captain of his escort ship, "Beam down a contingent of Jem'Hadar, have them sweep the perimeter for intruders. And have them check the identity of each staff member on the facility." Weyoun turned back to the administrator, "Once they're on board, raise the shields to avoid beam outs. I know it's a long shot that whoever hacked our robots are still here, but one worth taking. Once the Jem'Hadar are done we'll also search for any clues our saboteurs may have left behind. Now, on fixing the damage they've caused," he turned to the engineers. "Can you reinstall the old access keys?" he asked.

One of the engineers shook her head.

"I'm afraid even with a direct link to the hardware," chimed in the administrator, "the software cannot be changed without a passcode. To prevent enemies from hacking captured units."

"Though apparently it can still be read just fine," noticed Weyoun.

"Well yes, pretty hard to prevent that with a computer…" replied the administrator.

"I wonder if you would have mentioned that detail before or after a unit witnessing state secrets was captured," said Weyoun.

"I wasn't… It was in the design specs," stuttered the administrator.

"But not noted in any of your reports," said Weyoun. "Did you expect me to read through this thing's blueprints for potential flaws? Any other tasks you would like to delegate to your boss?"

"I…" started the administrator.

Weyoun held up his hand, "Don't worry, we can talk about this later. For now let's focus on the matters at hand, like raising the shield." The administrator rushed over to a nearby console and typed in the command.

Weyoun turned to the two engineers, "any chance we can determine the new passcodes from the new access keys?"

The shook their heads. "The passcodes are run through an irreversible calculation and compared to the access key, then deleted with each use. Even with the keys and the formula for the calculation, we have no way of determining what pattern of data will match the keys once run through the calculation, other than brute force trial and error. It's a pretty standard security setup."

Weyoun frowned, "So we'll need to track down the hackers and force the passcodes from them."

IIIIIIIIIIII

Garak and Bashir hid within a mesh of machines designed to manufacture high density batteries, trying to come up with a plan. They'd gotten here by assuming the identities of too vorta who'd been returning from a trip to Cardassia, but a simple blood test would show who they were, and Weyoun was no doubt planning on screening all staff now. The plan had been to trade out the access keys, sabotage the sensors, then have Sloan beam them out via his stealth ship in currently orbit. Sloan's cloak was effective, but Dominion sensor technology would have detected even Section 31's transporter beams, and they didn't want to be traced. They'd successfully replaced the access keys, but Weyoun had come slightly earlier than they'd anticipated, and now a Dominion warship was orbiting the planet. A ship with sensors just as effective as the facility's, so there went their escape plan.

"I don't suppose," said Bashir, quietly, "that we could just turn of this factory's shields, have Sloan beam us aboard, and then fly like hell after they trace the signal?"

"Well that depends doctor," replied Garak, "did Sloan mention something to you about having upgraded his engines when you last spoke? Because if I remember correctly, his Stealth ship cannot outrun the jem'hadar."

"Does it have to though?" said Bashir. "I mean, sure they'll trace to transporter beam to Sloan's location, but they still can't penetrate his cloak. A few unpredictable maneuvers later and they'll have no idea where we are."

"Except," countered Garak, "once they have active sensors probing the ship's exact location, I suspect they'll find some trace of our engines' propulsion when we move."

"Right," said Bashir, "His ship uses standard federation impulse engines which do emit virtual barrions at about 3 times the background level. They dissipate within 12 micrometers of the exhaust, but an active scan could detect them, and the cloak doesn't cover them. But the Dominion would basically have to be looking for that to notice… which is probably exactly what they'll be doing after the scans for Romulan cloaks turn up nothing."

"So then we're agreed," said Garak. "Beaming over right now won't work." He thought for a moment. "Doctor, any chance you've thought of an alternative?"

Bashir shook his head.

"That's unfortunate," said Garak. "Neither have I." He sighed. "Maybe we'll get lucky. Well, what's the best way to sabotage the shields?"

IIIIIIIIIIII

A Jem'Hadar captain stood on the bridge as his ship continued its patrol, one of two warships in orbit over Cardassia.

"Sir," said a soldier under his command, "a civilian transport ship has left the ground and is heading through the atmosphere,"

"Move to intercept," he ordered, placing the ship on screen within his optical viewer.

Within a few moments, the cargo ship was clearing the atmosphere, and the Jem'Hadar were nearly within firing range. Even with only two warships, there was no chance for a mere civilian craft to breach their blockade. The captain gave the order to fire, and watched as Dominion disruptor pulses shot towards their enemies… only for the cargo ship to jump to warp before the weapons reached them.

"Follow their warp trail on long range sensors," he ordered. "I want to find their debris." There was no way a civilian ship could survive the distortions from using a warp field inside a solar system.

IIIIIIIIIII

Over the fourth planet of Cardassia, a civilian ship jumped out of warp a mere 3 kilometers from the rocky surface. It's sublight momentum carried it along a path not quite parallel to that surface, traveling at a rate of 8 kilometers per second. Within the 2.3 seconds it took to crash violently into the ground, it spent 0.003 seconds grazing the android facility's shields. Within that 0.003 seconds, 86 cardassians and 37 vorta were beamed aboard the facility.

"I can't believe that worked," Silani shouted, patted her sides to check for injuries. She turned to Rejel. "That was some serious calculations," she congratulated her.

Rejel nodded, smiling. "I really am waisted in politics," she said. Then Rejel put her hand on Drenald, the former captain of the cargo ship they'd just lost. "I'm grateful for your sacrifice. You should be proud. Your ship held up under the distortions long enough for to get us here safely, just like you promised."

"Yeah," said Drenald, wistfully. "My girl's engine always ran colder than most, so the distortions were less violent. Plus those old tritanium hulls hold great under stress. Though they're not so great under impacts." He looked to his left, as if he could see his ship's wreckage through the walls and kilometers of crags.

"So where are we," asked Silani, as she began rounding up their troops into squads.

"It's one of the warehouses where they'd store the units before pickup," said Rejel. "I picked it because it'd be empty. They've only been running the factory long enough to fill up their first storage site. Now I suggest we get moving, it won't be long before the jem'hadar get here and I'd rather us be on the offensive."

At that moment a console on one of the walls lit up and began speaking, "Hello, members of the resistance. We'd like to offer our assistance."

Rejel looked towards the console and saw a video feed of two vorta in a dark room. She approached it, and asked "what kind of assistance?"

"Well, we have access to the internal sensors from here," said one. "I can tell you that the jem'hadar are currently spread throughout this facility, though they'll be regrouping quickly on your position." The vorta smiled pridefully. "They were looking for us. Oh, and we've locked Weyoun and the others out of control of the shields, so at least they can't turn them off and beam down more reinforcements…"

"Actually, I have an even better idea," said the second vorta. "If you're forces can get to the first warehouse where the current batch of robots are stored, you could activate them. We have in our possession the only passcodes for their access keys, and once the robots are activated would gladly command them to assist in your battle for control of this facility."

Rejel looked to Silani, "do you recognize these vorta?" she asked her.

"Yes," said Silani, "but they're Gamma Quadrant vorta. They were never approached by our resistance, and would have little reason to join it."

Rejel looked to the two vorta. "Why should I trust you?" she asked.

"Because," said the second vorta, suddenly bowing to her, "despite popular opinion, I have always been a loyal citizen of Cardassia."

IIIIIIIIII

The rebel forces split into squads. Rejel went with the first to capture and activate the robots, and Silani went with the second to secure the two saboteurs. Rejel didn't know whether to believe what they had told her, but converting these robots was what she had come here to do, and if they could help her, it was worth protecting them. Besides, they were in the control room for the shield generator, and with a Dominion Warship in orbit, that was definitely worth holding.

Her soldiers were outnumbered (they really hadn't planned for Weyoun and his jem'hadar to be here today, the facility must have finished its first wave early), but luckily the jem'hadar really had been spread out looking for the "vorta." Neither squad encountered more than a dozen enemy soldiers on the way to their targets.

The door into the first warehouse was sealed. Rejel had her soldiers place explosives on the wall 2 meters to the left of the door, and stand beside their soon-to-be-hole with their backs to the wall. Once it detonated, two of her soldiers bravely leapt before of the entrance, disruptors firing, while the rest of her squad stayed out of the line of fire until their comrades entered the room. No reason to line up single file for their enemies. Once the majority of her forces were within the room, Rejel joined them with the remainder, firing her weapon as best she could. Fortunately there were only a handful of jem'hadar within the warehouse guarding the robots.

Even more fortunate, the robots weren't all they were guarding. Amongst the cowering vorta in this room was someone Rejel recognized.

"Rejel," said the man as they're eyes made contact.

"Weyoun," she replied, sneering. She looked around. "You really should have kept more bodyguards," she told him.

Weyoun smiled in agreement, "I failed to anticipate your, bold, arrival. Tell me, were you behind the sabotage as well, or was all this one big coincidence?"

"Coincidence," she said, pointing her disruptor at him. "Today just isn't your lucky day."

Weyoun eyed the weapon, "You're really just going to shoot me," he asked.

"The 30 billion lives on your hands make a compelling case for it," she said.

"You really are mad about that aren't you," said Weyoun, fascinated. "I assumed your tantrum over the destruction of Romulus was just an excuse to grab power. After all you Cardassians are all so obsessed with ruling each other that you've been through more coup's recently than I can count. But you're actually upset over the lives of aliens. Of sworn enemies even. I can't believe I so misjudged your character. You really don't have the heart for all this death and destruction. You're better than that. Which is why you won't kill me. You're no executioner Rejel."

"So because I won't allow the murder of innocents, you think I won't end the one who killed them?" she shook her head. "You called the leader of Cardassia a naive child, and now you're calling the leader of the rebellion a pacifist. Don't you get tired of being wrong about me?"

"Alright, I'll admit it, I can't understand your motives," said Weyoun. "But you still shouldn't shoot me. Because I only see 58 soldiers in this room, and I have over 200 hundred in this facility. They may have been spread out during the beginning of this battle, but as we speak they are converging on our position. And when they get here," his eyes turned hard, "your only hope of survival will be keeping me as a hostage, and using your pathetic excuse for diplomacy skills to negotiate for a means of escape."

Rejel waved over one of her soldiers to guard Weyoun, while she walked over to a console. "Oh, I don't think your soldiers will be much of a problem Weyoun," she said, activating the robots. "But you are right about being a good hostage, and I still don't know what to do about that ship in orbit."

IIIIIIIIIIII

Sloan sat patiently at the helm of his ship, watching passive sensor readings, waiting to learn what was going on on the planet below. The Dominion warship still hung above the planet with him, oblivious to his presence.

Finally, Bashir broke the radio silence. It was an encrypted broadcast, one the Dominion would no doubt detect, but they wouldn't break this code for a while. Sloan couldn't reply to the message without giving away his position, and Bashir just making the broadcast would probably make them suspicious of a cloaked ship, since someone had to be receiving the broadcast. But at this point, the update was necessary.

Some of the news was encouraging. The rebel faction currently held the facility, which was better than the Dominion at least. They even captured Weyoun, which at this point was probably the only reason the jem'hadar ship in orbit wasn't blasting the factory into rubble. But that standoff wouldn't last long. The simple fact was this mission had failed. The enemy had discovered their sabotage before mass employment, and there was no way to hold this moon by force. And worse, Garak gave the rebel leader their passcodes, eliminating any hope of Section 31 using them to free the Federation. Sloan should have known not to trust the cardassian. For all their common enemies, he was still a patriate.

Sloan leaned back into his chair, closed his eyes, and tried to think of a way to salvage the situation.

His ship alerted him to hundreds of ships detected on the long range sensors. The front was a fleet of cardassian warships, followed close by a fleet of jem'hadar. Considering that the Dominion normally kept their cardassian and jem'hadar ships integrated, and that a Dominion fleet on its own would currently have no plausible reason for returning to the capitol like this, Sloan concluded the obvious. The cardassians were coming to join the rebel faction, the jem'hadar were chasing them in an attempt to stop them. This entire system was about to erupt into a battlefield.

This could be exactly the distraction Sloan needed.

IIIIIIIII

"How many ships are in system?" Vissad asked ops. She didn't expect many, but if she was wrong that would mean a battle on two fronts.

"Just three mam," said the officer.

Vissad smiled. She was going to win.

"Their positions?" she asked.

"Two are orbiting Cardassia Prime," replied ops. "The other is orbiting the fourth planet."

So, one was guarding the robot factory Kilana had told her about. That wouldn't be standard procedure. Something must be happening there, and the last thing Vissad wanted was Weyoun refilling his depleted army. Besides, it was probably best to avoid a massive battle over Cardassia Prime itself. It's orbit would be cluttered with debris for decades.

"Order the fleet," she commanded, "We're heading to the fourth moon."

IIIIIIIII

After the fleets reached the system, it took them several hours by impulse to reach the fourth planet. Once they extrapolated their course, the two warships orbiting Cardassia left to join its comrade, knowing that every ship would be needed in this battle. The cardassians would reach the planet several minutes before the jem'hadar chasing them, so the two warships slowed their engines to ensure they arrived with the others, so as not to be shot down immediately by vastly superior numbers. The warship already orbiting the fourth planet did not have this luxury, and was destroyed without taking down a single enemy with them.

As for the main battle, the jem'hadar felt confident. They were outnumbered by approximately 50%, but they were finally battling conventional opponents again, instead of those eerily swift and coordinated positronic warships. This time they were the supersoldiers, and the treacherous cardassians would learn to fear them.

Except, remarkable as the jem'hadar's genetic enhancements were, the most remarkable thing about them was their growth rate. Their rapid learning and enhanced dexterity helped make up for their lack of experience, but even a five year old jem'hadar wasn't much better than any other humanoid combat veteran. And meanwhile, what cardassians may have lacked in genetic supremacy, they more than made up for in training. As children, cardassians were taught exercises to develope eidetic memory, multitasking, and gut based vector analysis. Combined with the strict discipline of a military focused society, and years of experience in multiple recent wars, it was clear these soldiers were just as qualified to be called "super." And they felt no fear this day.

Several minutes into the battle, the Dominion realized they would need to retreat if they were going to salvage any of their forces. The vorta commanders reluctantly ordered their jem'hadar to do so, but not before destroying the factory below. Weyoun or no Weyoun, they couldn't allow the rebels access to more soldiers. The Dominion was at enough of a numbers disadvantage as it was. The cardassian ships defended the structure once the jem'hadar began firing on it, but they couldn't drive them off before the facility's shields had collapsed, and the factory had taken several unprotected hits.

Still, what remained of the Dominion fleet retreated, and the Cardassian system was once again under cardassian control.

IIIIIIIII

Surrounded by smoke and darkness, Bashir pulled out his scanner and shifted its active sensors into the visible spectrum for a makeshift flashlight, and began looking through the wreckage, grateful that his section hadn't had a hull breach. This planet didn't have much of an atmosphere. He found Silani and two cardassians under a fallen beam, and shouted over several robots to help lift it off them. Once it was off them, he checked for wounds. Two of them were fine, but one of the cardassians needed immediate attention. He tore off some of his shirt for a quick tourniquet and had Silani apply pressure to the wound, then ordered one of the robots to find him a medkit.

Once the patient was stable enough that he could abandon him without dooming him, he began to look for others. He found some, and quickly his rescue efforts merged with others, and a sort of triage formed. Eventually rescue arrived from the conquering fleet, and they were organized enough to make a list of the dead and missing.

Weyoun was gone.

At first they assumed he was under some rubble, but even with sensors they couldn't find his body. Silani worried that the Dominion had beamed him away after collapsing the shields, but Bashir had a different theory. After all, Weyoun wasn't the only one missing.

Bashir shook his head and muttered under his breath, "Sloan."


End file.
